YouTube How-To's

Getting Started

There are two ways to use YouTube in your classroom - you can curate videos that others have made, or you can create and upload your own videos.

Finding Content

With over 300 hours of content uploaded every minute(!), finding the perfect video to accompany a lesson can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Once you've entered your search terms, don't forget to add filters. Need a short, 4K video on last week's political stories? Or a 20-minute, closed-captioned explanation of particle physics? Filters can help narrow down your search results to the most relevant videos.

Subscribing to a Channel

Have you found a video creator who consistently produces videos relevant to your lessons? You can subscribe to their channel and get notified every time they release a new video. While signed into your account, click on the red Subscribe button under any video to subscribe to that channel. More on subscribing can be found here.

Creating a Playlist

Want to provide a collection of additional resources on a particular topic? Curate a list of recommended videos by creating a playlist. Playlists can be shared with your students, or you can create a class playlist on which your students can collaborate and add videos. You can even assign rules to automatically add videos to a playlist based on keywords or tags applied to newly uploaded videos. You can edit, reorder and remove videos from your playlists at any time, and create as many playlists as you'd like. Additional playlist resources can be found here.

Recommended Content

So you watched one funny cat video, and now YouTube has decided that's all that you are interested in? You can remove recommended content from your home page, or manage the types of videos that will appear by editing or deleting your watch history.

Creating Content

Can't find the perfect video to complement a lesson? Create one! If you need help creating a video, reach out to your dedicated Instructional Technology Specialist.

Uploading a Video

Once you have a completed video, uploading it to YouTube is a simple process. Click Upload, find you're video, and you're well on your way. You can add A few things to note:

    • Privacy Settings - YouTube has three separate privacy settings you can apply to your videos: Public, Private and Unlisted.
      • Public videos are searchable and viewable by everyone on YouTube. These videos can show up in recommendations and will be posted to your channel.
      • Private videos are viewable only to you and others you choose.
      • Unlisted videos are not searchable, but anyone with a link can view.
    • Length - Verify your account to upload videos longer than 15 minutes.
    • Video files - YouTube accepts most file types. Max file size is 128GB.

More Video Settings

Once your video is uploaded, there are a number of tabs chock full of settings you can change to edit or enhance your video.

    • Info & Settings - Under the first tab, Info & Settings, you can add a description to your video, change the thumbnail (the still image that accompanies your video), add tags to make your video easier to find and change your privacy settings. Under Advanced, you can allow or prohibit comments, set age restrictions, change distribution options, and set categories and locations.
    • Enhancements - Three more tabs under Enhancements allow you to improve the quality of your video:
        • Quick Fixes gives you the ability to stabilize (in case of shaky video), adjust lighting, contrast and saturation settings, or speed up or slow down your video.
        • Filters gives you several visual filters (like Instagram) to apply to your video, and lets you preview each one against the original.
        • Blurring Effects lets you blur out faces or images from your video, should you wish to obscure any part.
    • Audio - With the Audio tab, you can replace the audio track from your video with an ad-free track from YouTube.
    • End Screen & Annotations - Under this tab you can add links to other videos, playlists or approved websites.
    • Cards - Add interactivity to your video by adding cards.
    • Subtitles/CC - YouTube can automatically transcribe and add subtitles to your video. They may not be perfect, so you can also upload a transcript, or edit the individual subtitles throughout the video.

Creator Studio

Manage all of your videos and organize your channel in the Creator Studio. You can even get analytic information on who is viewing your videos and from where.

Sharing/Embedding

Now that your video is ready to be viewed, you'll need to share it out. You can either share out a direct link to the video, or embed it in a website or Canvas page.