Live Streaming via YouTube

Google Hangouts on-air is now YouTube Live Streaming. If you are interested in setting up a publicly visible livestream you will need to visit YouTube, not Google+ as you may have done in the past.

Google Hangouts has a maximum participant limit of 15 (Gmail accounts) or 25 (G Suite for Education / Business accounts). If you need more viewers than either of these limits you will need to use YouTube Live streaming.

I lead monthly webinars to discuss various topics related to educational technology. These monthly hangouts are run through YouTube live. It easy to set up, free, and very easy for viewers to access.

Scheduling a Live stream is quite simple.

1. Visit you YouTube.com/live_dashboard

This will take you directly to the live stream portion of your YouTube account. To schedule a live event, click "events" and click "new live event".

2. Set up your Event

Fill out the basic information on the event page. You can come back and adjust this information later if needed. The date and start / end times are the most important part.

3. Advanced Settings

Most of the default settings on this page should be fine, but there are a few settings you may want to adjust:

• Live chat - do you want your viewers to be able to chat during the stream? This feature is on by default. 
• Promotions - by default, Google will post your live stream on your YouTube channel when it goes live. If you don't want the general public to know about this feed, uncheck these boxes. 

That's it! When you are done, click the "create event" button.

Starting your Live Feed: 

To begin your live feed visit YouTube.com/live_dashboard, find your event and click "Start Hangout on Air." This will launch your Google hangout.

Once your hangout has launched you can invite others to join as contributors. You are still in the setup phase. Your feed is NOT being broadcasted.

To officially start your broadcast you must click the green "start broadcast" button at the bottom of your hangout.

Watching a live Broadcast

There are a couple different ways to help your viewers access your live feed.

1. Embed the feed 

Your video feed is a regular YouTube video which means that it can be easily embedded into your blog, website, or even in your learning management system. Viewers just need to click the play button. The video behaves a little like a DVR; viewers will have the ability to watch from the beginning, pause, and rewind the feed as they wish.

The downside to embedding the feed into your website is that viewers won't be able to access the live chat.

2. View on YouTube

Your live stream will also be visible on YouTube. Here, viewers can watch the feed AND participate in the live chat. Simply share the video link with your viewers to give them access to the view page. Note that your video doesn't need to be publically posted on YouTube in order for it to have a "watch now" page. This requires that you send the link directly to your viewers as there is no other way for them to find it.

My Live Stream Page

For my webinars I setup a simple, single page Google Site on which I embed the video stream and provide instructions on how to access the chat. You can view my setup here. 

Post Recording

After your live stream has ended, Google will automatically post a recording of the stream to your YouTube channel. Depending on your settings, this will either be a public or hidden video. The live chat is not saved.

Hangouts On Air is now YouTube live. While the core functions haven't changed, the process of setting up and managing your live stream events is much improved.

Cleaning Up YouTube for your Classroom

Video is a powerful teaching tool. As the largest online video repository, YouTube is a popular destination for video clips however YouTube is blocked at many schools and teachers are often hesitant to use YouTube because of easy access to inappropriate content and the unpredictability of when inappropriate content can appear. The good news, is that there are ways to safely and effectively use YouTube in your classroom! Here are some tips and suggestions.

Option 1: Don't use YouTube.comInstead of directing students to YouTube where they could potentially get into trouble, embed videos into your class blog or website. Embedding video avoids inappropriate comments and related videos which regularly appear on YouTube.com. It will require some additional work on the part of the teacher to find and embed the videos on a class website, but if the videos are good, it's worth the effort! 

Tip: Utilize Playlists
Playlists help you curate content as you find it. Playlists can be easily shared with students or embedded in your blog or web page, like the example below.

Tip: Instructions: How to embed a playlist.

Tip: Disable Related Videos
Google provides users with the option to exclude problematic "related videos" from displaying after a video finishes. Simply check the "do not show related videos" box when sharing a video.


Option 2: Use YouTube for Schools
YouTube for Schools is a special version of YouTube that only allows students to view selected videos. YouTube for schools must be enabled by a school network administrator.

Setting up YouTube for Schools
30 min. overview of YouTube for Schools

Become a Video Curator - Create Your Own YouTube Chanel
Creating your own YouTube channel allows you to upload your own video content, favorite videos and create playlists. These features are helpful and important if you plan on showing video clips in your classroom or embedding clips into your class blog or wiki. 

Examples of Teacher YouTube Channels

• Bozeman Biology
• Labcast
• James Sanders

Create a Class Chanel
A Class YouTube Chanel can be used to highlight student work. You will need an email address that is NOT currently associated with a YouTube channel in order to setup a class channel. Students LOVE seeing their work online and can easily share their work with others. Creating a class channel avoids the problems that can arise if you ask students to create their own YouTube channel.

Examples of Class YouTube Channels:

• SCS Biology Channel
• Math Train

Additional Resources: 

• YouTube for Teachers - A site designed to help teachers learn how to incorporate video effectively into the classroom. 
• YouTube EDU - Educational content from a variety of content providers such as Khan Academy, Universities, TED, and Discovery Education. Note: the content of Youtube EDU is what students with access to YouTube for Schools will see. 
• Harnessing the Power of YouTube - A 30 min. presentation by classroom teacher James Sanders on how he has incorporated YouTube into his classroom.

Cain's Arcade: The Power of the Internet

Every once in a while I come across something that illustrates the amazing power the internet has to connect people and to elevate that which is encouraging and uplifting. The story of Cain's Arcade is one of those stories. It's 10 minutes long, but well worth your time.

If you like this video, here are some similar titles that I really enjoy:

• Improv Everywhere: Mudcats little league flashmob. 
• "Validation": a short film (16 min) on the power of kind words. 
• TMB Panyee Football Club: Playing Soccer on a small island.

Dear Google: Please let us use YouTube at School!

Google's products are wonderful classroom resources. Sadly, one of my favorites, YouTube, can not be accessed by students in educational settings. My school completely blocks student access to YouTube; both the site and embedded videos. I agree with this policy: there is simply too much garbage on YouTube to allow student access. In order to reverse this policy, and gain access to the millions of students and teachers who would benefit from YouTube access, Google will need to structure YouTube in a filter friendly manner so that required school web filters can distinguish between trash and treasure.

Apple took a step toward becoming "school friendly" when it added a K-12 section to iTunes (check out my previous post on the topic). This move was made after an overwhelming response to the addition of iTunesU and the wealth of content uploaded by colleges and universities from around the country. The service hasn't taken off. In my opinion, this is because of the added layer of complexity that the iTunes software adds to the process of finding and downloading videos.

Google has a prime opportunity to own educational video content on the web by optimizing YouTube for use by educational institutions. Here are four reasons why they are the best company to accomplish this:

1. The corporate philosophy at Google is to allow open access to information, no special software, subscription fees, or restrictions.
2. Google has the brain power, coffers, and infrastructure to satisfy demand.
3. YouTube's technical infrastructure is unmatched in terms of speed, reliability, and ease of use.
4. YouTube is familiar to virtually all internet users (ranked as the third most popular internet site by Alexa).

There are essentially two reasons to use YouTube or other related video upload sites. The first is to upload and share your videos. I do this fairly regularly, perhaps as much as once a week. In my classroom, I assign 1-2 video creation projects per year. YouTube certainly satisfies need, but so do several other video upload sites such as Vimeo, SchoolTube, and Google Video. The second reason to use a video site is to find a video on a specific topic. For this purpose, YouTube's breadth and depth is unmatched. No other video site can match the content offered by YouTube. Phillip White reports that the number of videos available on YouTube in July of 2009 was somewhere around 100 million. TechCrunch reports that YouTube streams as many as 1.2 billion videos per day. With a pool that deep, it's hard not to find something useful.

The entire reason that Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion was to be the facilitator of the largest collection of user generated video on the web. Google Video has a fraction YouTube's content. The fact that most students are unable to access this resource is unfortunate. Schools can choose to use any number of sites for uploading and sharing videos, but no other site (currently) can offer the range of videos offered by YouTube. For this reason alone, Google should optimize YouTube so that schools can offer this content to students. Here are some suggestions:

1. Standardize video URL's: each video hosted on YouTube has a unique URL. Because of this, unblocking videos is a tedious task. Each video must be unblocked separately. Standardizing URL's so that each video showed up as "youtube.com/jrsowash/watch?v=wH-6vM61LaI" would allow the unblocking of all video content from a "clean" user.
2. Add Channel Certifications/Ratings: Allow YouTube users to apply for channel certifications that would stamp their content with a seal of approval. Educational institutions, non-profits, businesses, and certified teachers could apply for this certification which would elevate the credibility of their content. These certifications would require independent confirmation by some authoritative group. I would recommend something similar to the Wikipedia model of editing and approval for this. Use the wisdom of the crowd!
3. Give individual videos a rating: We rate our movies and TV shows, why not online videos? Allow users to tag videos with G, PG, PG-13, and R ratings (or some equivalent) . Again using the wisdom of the crowd, videos with some number of the same rating (say 10) would be confirmed into that category. This would make filtering videos for viewing at school easy.
   Note: Just this week Google announced a new feature called "safe mode" on YouTube. This is a step in the right direction!
4. Solve video search: One of the biggest unsolved challenges related to digital media is how to search the content of a video. Currently, all video searching is accomplished through text tags which users add to their video. No one (not even Google, the king of search) has figured out how to dynamically search video content. When they do (yes, they will eventually!), filtering content will be much easier and automated. Inappropriate videos tagged as "educational" will be immediately identified and the tag can be changed.

Google, your tools have added tremendous value to my classroom. I hope that you are able to open up YouTube to K-12 students in the US and around the world.

School YouTube Pages

In the past couple of weeks I have discovered two good examples of school YouTube pages. One is from Staten Island Academy and the other is from Castilleja Girls School. I have been talking to the Media director at my school about possibly creating a YouTube channel to showcase promotional videos, student projects, and sports highlights. We are both very excited about the possibility, but the sticking point is obtaining permission to post student images on the web. We have a media release form in use at school, but for a special use such as this we would be required to have special permission from students/parents authorizing the use of the image on the web.

Has anyone dealt with this issue and come up with a manageable and effective solution? I would be very interested in obtaining copies of media release forms upon which we could build our own.

Youtube goes educational...the times, they are a changing!

On March 27, Youtube announced the creation of youtube.com/edu, a dedicated video channel for lectures and material from leading higher education institutions in the United States. Currently this channel hosts over 20,000 videos from prestigious schools such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the University of Michigan. Many of the videos posted are full length lectures from noteworthy professors including the ever popular physics lectures by Professor Walter Lewin of MIT.

Now your first reaction to this addition by Youtube might be, "it's about time that there is something useful and educational on youtube, I'm sick of watching song parodies sung by teenagers in the mirror or action shots of people being stupid." While this is a welcome fringe benefit, I would submit that there are two important trends to be considered:

1. Large companies are realizing that there is a huge demand for educational training and information. 

The two largest and most innovative companies that I can think of are Apple and Google. Apple introduced  iTuneU several years ago and it has grown rapidly. Apple recently introduced iTunesU K-12 to further expand their academic offerings. Google (which owns Youtube) is quickly becoming one of the most formidable companies in the world and one of Apple's greatest rivals. I am not surprised by the launch of Youtube/edu and expect to see a K-12 channel made available within the next year. 

2. Education is taking place OUTSIDE of the classroom more and more. People of all ages are learning through their iPods, web enabled phones, wikis, blogs, and other web 2.0 technologies. 

School buildings and classrooms are so 20th century! Online learning has increased exponentially in the past 10 years with no end in sight. I continue to stand by my prediction that online learning will become the dominant form of education within 20 years. 

Youtube/edu has some interesting content which may be of some use to K-12 teachers, however the addition of such a service signals a change in the winds of education. In the words of the great poet-songwriter, "The times, they are a changing!"