Each day, teachers and administrators in every school utilize many digital tools and social media applications. Some are used for official school business, while others are used for classroom teaching. For the majority of these tools, schools use them just as the general public would. Tweets provide quick, immediate information and alerts. Facebook brings groups constituents together and highlights events. Instagram captures snapshot moments of school life. But one tool lags behind in educational use. YouTube is perhaps the most indicative digital tool of a generational divide in social media usage. It is wildly popular with teens, yet its potential is barely tapped into for schools. Though it functions differently than many other social media tools, and has its challenges, YouTube offers a great deal of possibility in connecting schools and delivering content to their various constituents.
YouTube has been around since 2005. During the past 15 years, its popularity has grown exponentially, even though it has the same general purpose of a being a video hosting website. Its platform has shifted over time, with content creator channels and on-demand programming now a major part of YouTube’s draw. Many people young and old watch videos on YouTube on a regular basis. But the usage rate for younger people, especially teens, is staggering. According to Education Week’s article Why Generation Z Learners Prefer YouTube Lessons Over Printed Books, a “Pew Research Center survey in September 2018 found that 85 percent of US teenagers use YouTube,” nearly a third “use the video-sharing platform more often than other social media platforms,” and almost half “spend three or more hours a day on YouTube.” Much like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, YouTube has become a go-to for a substantial part of the population, and in particular the part of the population that is going to school, making it a key tech tool in education that is often underutilized.
My school could certainly benefit from using YouTube in several areas. In the classroom, many teachers identify quality videos to include in their lessons, and may regularly include channels such as Crash Course, Khan Academy, and TED Talks in their planning. However, as a school we do not encourage or provide support for the use of any specific digital learning tools. But we should! As The Tech Edvocate points out, the combination of YouTube and a learning device or phone is like having “a classroom in your pocket…. The ease of access and flexibility of YouTube is allowing amateur and professional content developers to develop instructional content to a global audience on almost any conceivable topic.” According to Edutopia, YouTube is also a great way to “elevate and energize instruction” as a “powerful tool for teaching and learning” alike.
My school would also benefit from using YouTube in its marketing, admissions, and advancement outreach. Currently, our barely visited channel hosting a meager few videos, much of it content that was produced over the course of several years. but to fully tap into its potential, according to Social Media (2016) author David Kelly, we need to build our brand by being active, customizing our channel, thinking about our content titles, and perhaps most importantly engaging with our audience. YouTube could potentially connect us with eighth graders trying to decide on where to go to high school, donors who are unsure of their commitment, and current constituents who enjoy consistent interaction with their school.
Of course, with any online digital tool, there are potential downsides. YouTube is notorious for being a site full of inaccurate and inappropriate material, difficult to sift through and hard to take seriously. This perception keeps administrators and teachers from fully trusting it, even though students “YouTube” things just as others would “Google” them. It is also something that would have to be heavily managed – as noted above, good YouTube practices require being active and posting a lot of new, varied content that fits the school’s customized branding. And along with all of that content comes the bane of the internet, comment sections, which would need to be monitored and policed.
YouTube fits well into the vision of Kevin Kelly in his book The Inevitable (2016). During the first three chapters, Kelly makes a strong case that the internet has transformed drastically in nature from its early days of static web pages that you visited for information to a dynamic experience in which users engage with one another. He says that by 2050, “the web will more and more resemble a presence you relate to rather than a place – the famous cyberspace of the 1980s – that you journey to” (Kelly, p.25) YouTube fits this ongoing evolution and “fluidity” well. While its interface has remained relatively similar, its content is constantly and rapidly shaped and reshaped by countless interactions happening every day. For schools, this means that YouTube can be conversational with constituents, providing constant interaction around leadership communications, marketing, admissions, teaching, athletics, and more.
Catholic Ed Tech 
Nice post. You alluded to this, but YouTube is the second most used search engine, just behind Google. – https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/meet-search-engines/
And as you noted, it is definitely where the teens are! https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/
Which raises the question…what sort of investment does a Catholic School need to make to produce quality videos for YouTube…or will videos shot with an iPhone be “good enough”?
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I do think additional investment would be needed for a school to ramp up video production, but I also think it would require a reallocation of priorities. Currently, my school posts videos to YouTube whenever we produce them. But, they’re created for advancement campaigns, our gala dinner, and admissions events — not for our YouTube channel itself. If our Communications Director was asked to cultivate our YouTube presence on an equal basis as our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts (content is shared across them anyway), it could transform our marketing strategy. Certainly we’d need to spend more money on some high production value videos, but that could be augmented with in-the-moment iPhone videos that capture everyday school life.
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You Tube is a great way to enhance lessons and to reinforce learning.I had a teacher tube account to
Post school videos of students performing.
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YouTube is great in the classroom — I think it is definitely worth the effort of management to bring those resources into the classroom.
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I enjoyed reading your post and learning more about Youtube. I am one of the administrators you write of that do not trust it in the classrooms. I worry that teachers do not screen the content before posting and the inappropriate and inaccurate videos will surface! Of course, we had a wonderful motivational speaker in this week and in his effort to connect with the middle school students played current music with inappropriate lyrics! I looked at the teacher seated next me and asked if I heard that correctly! She responded that she had no idea what they were saying. When I asked the speaker to turn off the music due to inappropriate lyrics, he said that this was the clean version! So I am a big fan of screening content! As for quality videos @bwatwood, if they are quick enough, I believe an iphone video is “good enough” but would love a high quality one at little to no cost. We need to befriend a videographer in my school.
Rebecca
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I suppose that’s a big question — should we trust teachers/staff to review content and post appropriately (and hold them accountable when they don’t), or should we micromanage social media decisions in an effort to be cautious?
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It is a good question…and to the point, how do we work with both teachers and students to make them comfortable in both using and filtering? As Dave Weinberger has noted (and you will see him more in this class), the web is full of crap! But not using the web seems to be cutting off the nose to spite the face.
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I enjoyed reading your post and considering your reasons for why YouTube is important in the classroom. I do use YouTube for short video clips when I want the students to get a better understanding of a concept, for a fun song to help them memorize facts, or to see the content in real world situations. I would love to see my school create videos for others to see, but I am concerned about the privacy portion of it. YouTube videos can spread far and wide – I think more than FaceBook posts. If anything goes “viral” it is out there for anyone and everyone to see and to comment on. Unfortunately, we live in society where many people write the first things that pop into their minds whether it be kind, correct, or the complete opposite. I have not thought about using YouTube for marketing purposes, but you brought up a couple of good points.
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Definitely true — we’d have to be very careful and thoughtful with our posts.
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We do not use our Youtube channel enough. Part of that is because I am part-time technology, part-time Literature teacher. Next year, we are looking into ways to use Youtube better. The plan is to post our morning announcements, all recitals, concerts, and events. Our HSA wants to film a “Coffee Talk” for parents, and post it as well.
As far as Youtube and its usage goes, I am the mother of a teenager that spends more time on Youtube than Xbox. My son is gifted, and quite often looks to Youtube for quick answers. He loves learning, so this supplements his regular education. In addition, just like his father, he LOVES trivia. Youtube provides hours of this. He regularly uses Youtube over Google search engine.
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Check out the Pew Center link I tweeted this morning…looks like your son is in good company!
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My school streamed our announcements for a few years using The Cube (which looks like it was purchased by another company). It was a fun/creative way for the prayer, pledge of allegiance, and announcements to be read in the morning. We stopped because some classrooms were having trouble streaming without buffering, which didn’t look great, and some teachers wouldn’t end up running the stream because of those issues. If it was me in charge, I would have reintroduced them at some point, but we haven’t yet.
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