YOUTUBE

Youtube:

Above all with the current reality due to COVID-19, attendance at schools is paralyzed but the monitoring of classes is not. Youtube is an alternative used by many teachers and students to continue advancing and reinforcing concepts.

Due to this particular situation, it is a good opportunity to start introducing ICT in the classroom, it is essential if we do not want to isolate them from the immediate future. In addition, both teachers and parents have the obligation to teach them to use them in a practical and didactic way, with their pros and cons. In this sense, teacher training in this subject is essential, but parents should not avoid this knowledge either.

Among ICTs, social networks play a very important role in education, YouTube being one of the most used tools due to its versatility. But what does YouTube allow us to do besides watching videos? What are youtube advantages?

Motivation: students can create their own projects. This, in addition to involving them in it, makes them feel motivated by something that they themselves have created. Communication: they learn to express themselves in front of and behind the camera. Teamwork: because to make an educational video different people are needed. Coordinating the team, agreeing on what they are going to say, ordering ideas and agreeing on how to record will help them foster communication, as well as empathy. Inform and investigate: it is yet another channel to inform yourself about the topics in which you are interested or in which you should train. In this sense, the role of the teacher is essential to teach them to distinguish false channels from those that are a good source of information.

How to make educational videos efficient for students: 

- different playlists for each topic.

- videos should not be longer than 10 minutes (introduction to the topics: further information in the podcasts)

- using images in each video to make them interesting.

- background music.

- making use of the comment section: students can write tasks in the comments, ask questions.

- additional videos answering students' questions.

- if students present projects they can even create a video and upload it to the class' channel.

Some of the examples of educational channels are:

1. Smile and learn:
This channel is aimed at children from 3 to 12 years old, which makes it perfect for children who
are in Primary School. It offers several videos with different content, so they can learn from the
months of the year or colors, to how to relax, protect themselves online...

2. Telmo y Tula:
This channel is very fun and original because it offers different activities and crafts to develop children’s creativity.

3. Piopio family: This channel also has a content of several subjects, so they teach to read, to subtract with two figures… In addition, in the community section, they offer questions for students to solve.

There are many channels, but we believe that these are very good for children to learn some things from home or to review them, for example, if in the quarantine period we had a group of first graders we could send them the link of piopio family where they explain how to add, so they can review at home in a different way.