YouTube for Schools allows teachers and students to access educational videos. However, educators across sectors need to embrace the notion of students as 'produsers'. Consuming videos needs to be supplemented with student created videos. This session will take you through the process of setting up a student video project and how to assess it. Youtube for schools is school-appropriate and therefore the best platform for publishing videos by school children and for creating a classroom video channel. This session will also discuss ethics in relation to children's use of videos in and out of the classroom and the importance of educating children to be responsible 'produsers'. OER available at http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/Centre-for-Higher-Education-Development/Centre-for-Educational-Technology/Student-Video-Production-Assignment-to-Assessment Although written for a Higher Ed context, this session will apply ideas to primary and secondary school students.

1. Nicola Pallitt
PhD (Media Studies)
Centre for Educational Technology
University of Cape Town
Google in Education Summit SA 26 September 2013
Children as ‘produsers’:
YouTube for Schools &
learner-generated videos

2. YouTube & schools
• Many schools restrict learners’ access to video
• Issues: bandwidth + inappropriate content
• Challenge: students have access on smartphones,
easy to use a proxy to bypass network restrictions
• Recent ‘bad press’:
• High School students in San Diego suspended for
Twerking video
• 15 year old arrested for YouTube videos of phone app
superimposing a gun over video, making a video of a
mock shootout at school

4. YouTube for Schools
• Allows schools to access educational videos from
Khan Academy, Standford, TED, etc
• Focus is on school-appropriate content – learners
can only watch YouTube EDU videos & those added
by the school
• Videos confined to the school’s network
• Access video playlists created by other teachers
• Focus is more on consuming existing ‘elite’ content
than on producing own videos
• American bias? Need for local content in SA

6. YouTube for Schools
• Move towards teachers and learners as ‘produsers’
• Produser = hybrid user/producer
• Replacing traditional production/consumption
models.
• "the collaborative and continuous building and
extending of existing content in the pursuit of
further improvement" (Axel Bruns, 2007).
• Prosumer = hybrid producer/consumer
• Implication for edu: A shift in pedagogic paradigms
(Bruns et al., 2007)

7. YouTube for Schools
• Parents are weary of YouTube and need to be
informed about YouTube for Schools
• Teachers scaffold social media literacies &
responsible social media use in the process of
setting a video assignment
• Great place to teach learners about copyright and
ethical issues, such as informed consent (for High
School)
• Foster sense of community, empowering
• Peers educating one another through video &
engaging in group work

8. YouTube for Schools
• Free video editing tools: Windows Live Movie Maker,
iMovie for Apple
• User-friendly, easy drag-and-drop logic
• Video cameras easily accessible - basic digital camera or
smartphone
• Teacher can upload their own & learner-produced
videos to YouTube for Schools
• If you wish to use learners’ videos on a school website
or outside of the network, seek parental & other
consent

9. Windows Live Movie
Maker

10. Video projects…
• History: interview people about what life was like
during apartheid & balance with research
• Geography & Biology: Video is good for explaining
processes like climatology & plant growth
• English: learners divide into groups and perform
key parts of a play or novel, video about parts of
speech
• Maths: Students can explain and solve problems in
their own words & languages
• … and much, much more! Can you think of some?

11. Project timeline
• Allow enough time for planning, video, editing:
• Week 1: Pre-Production (Research & Planning)
• Week 2: Production (Shooting on Location)
• Week 3: Post Production (Editing)
• Week 4: Written Report and Premiere

12. Assessing learners’ videos
• Have the learners addressed the topic?
• Are they using a range of media to tell a story?
• Does the video suggest evidence of good planning?
• Like an essay, a video has a beginning, middle and end &
each has a function:
• Beginning: Does the student introduce or frame the topic
effectively? Is the topic or question of the video clear from
the start? Is the viewer being drawn in?
• Middle: Does the middle of the video elaborate on the topic
by using a combination of images, sound, video and text to
support the argument presented in the introduction to the
story?
• End: Does the viewer have a sense that the topic has been
concluded or a question answered? Are there credits
acknowledging interviewees, photographers, etc?

13. Issues to consider…
• Introducing popular cultural activities into the
classroom comes with challenges
• Learners associate the medium with
virality/humour/spectacle and have to be taught
about the ‘educational video’ genre
• Like a school essay, learners use video to tell a story
• Need to have an explicit brief, encourage learners
to work together to plan and storyboard their
videos

14. Here’s an OER to get going 
We hope you find this guide useful &
would love to hear more about your
student video projects & experiences
with YouTube for Schools.
Email Nicola: mz.pallitt@gmail.com
Twitter: @nicolapallitt
mz.pallitt@gmail.com