How to start a classroom YouTube channel

Available as handout on http://bit.ly/channelYouTube 

How to start a YouTube channel for your classroom

Katie Morrow, ESU 8

Why?

• Ability to Share: Access
• Organization: Playlists
• Promotion & Spreadability: Subscriptions
• Storage & Cost: Unlimited, free space!

Examples of Educational YouTube Channels:

• Mr. Havranek’s Science Channel
• O’Neill Public Schools Student Sharing Gallery
• ESU 8 Wednesday Webinars

Getting Started:

*Each Google account/Gmail address automatically has 1 YouTube channel associated with it. You simply need to activate it to use!

What You Need:

• Google account with Google+ enabled
• YouTube.com OR YouTube app

Steps to Complete:

1. Sign in to your Google account.
2. Visit YouTube.com
3. Click on ‘My Channel’ from the main menu.
4. Accept the terms of service to create channel.
5. Add Channel art and Channel description (optional).
6. Choose your Channel Settings including privacy settings and customizing the layout of your channel (add a channel trailer and organize playlists into sections)
7. Create new playlists around topics of interest by either uploading videos or clicking “Add to” button when viewing videos from others.
8. Share your playlists and/or your entire channel.

Channel Settings

• Description (sentence or two describing your channel content, purpose, and intended audience)
• Channel art (suggestion: Create graphic with dimensions of 2560 x 1440 pixels or use Canva.com to create YouTube channel art.)
• Privacy (can be set at the individual video and/or playlist level as well)
• Customize the layout of your channel
• Channel trailer (welcome video that will only play when people visit your channel for the first time)
• Suggest content to subscribers
• Organize playlists into sections (lots of options for organization here)
• Advanced settings

Playlists

• Can create as many playlists as you want...
• But only 10 playlists can be displayed as sections on your channel homepage
• Create playlists by class, chapter, or topic
• Add videos to playlists directly upon uploading or when viewing from YouTube
• Add tags for additional keyword searchability

Uploading videos to your channel

• Upload button from YouTube in a browser
• Choose Privacy: Public, Unlisted, Private
• OR use YouTube capture app (signed in to your account) from a mobile device
• While uploading, you can add description, details, etc.
• Click ‘Publish’ for it to be searchable/subscribers to get notification

Power in SUBSCRIBING

• Require students and encourage others to Subscribe to your channel by clicking once on the button on your Channel homepage.  
• If you get over 100 subscribers, you can create a custom URL for your channel.

Additional Information

• In order to upload videos longer than 15 minutes you must verify your YouTube account (YouTube will send a verification code as a text message or voice mail so that you can verify you are a human YouTuber!)