Using video/YouTube playlists







With a Youtube account, there are many authoring features available, and one of the most useful for teaching and research is the Playlist feature. When signed in to Youtube, search for a video and when you find something useful, click the "Add To" button below the video. Here's some more help on Youtube playlists: How to make a basic playlist, Playlist programming, Other ideas with Youtube

For teaching
You can often use Youtube playlists as effective alternatives to presentations and lectures. Take the key topics of points you would normally make in a lesson, or need to make in this lesson. Use those topics of points in a search through Youtube. When you find useful videos, add them to a playlist with your lesson title. Once you have all the videos you would use in this playlist, consider adding webcam recordings of yourself introducing and/or summarising each video point, and to add continuity to the playlist. You can now embed the playlist in your website, or email the link to your playlist.

Help on Youtube playlists: How to make a basic playlist, Playlist programming, Other ideas with Youtube

For learning
As a small activity individuals can create a Youtube account and collect videos on Youtube into a playlist for a specified technique or topic. Playlists are a feature of all Youtube accounts, and a great way to manage and re present Youtube content, and creating playlists can be an activity that sets people up for effective use of Youtube as a learning platform.

Help on Youtube playlists: How to make a basic playlist, Playlist programming, Other ideas with Youtube

For assignments
Building on the Youtube playlist teaching and learning activities described earlier, the playlist creation can be used for a longer term assignment. After surveying videos on Youtube for a specified technique or topic, and adding good videos to a playlists, the playlist can be customised and submitted as an assignment. An extension to this assignment could be that by working either in groups or as individuals, people produce videos where none adequately existed in the playlist collection.

The playlists that are submitted in these assignments can help you as the teacher to update and improve your own playlists, thus helping to set up the next group of students with the best and most current information on Youtube per year.

Considerations
Bare in mind that Youtube is a commercial social media site and the availability of the service or videos held within it should not be overly relied upon - particularly for longer term recording of formal assignment and assessments. A strategy to mitigate this risk is to require videos that are added to playlists carry the Creative Commons Attribution copyright license, and to use a video downloader like Keepvid to make a copy and backup of suitably copyrighted videos.