How to Use YouTube to Share Your Lessons

YouTube is a very powerful platform, and there are far too many features to cover in one short tutorial. I actually keep my own use of YouTube pretty simple. I upload my teaching videos, organize them into playlists, and then share or embed those videos wherever I need them.

One feature I really like is playlists. You can group related videos together so students can easily move from one lesson to the next. For example, I have playlists for my beginner and intermediate English lessons. Instead of giving students individual links to every video, I can put the whole series together in one place.

The basic process is pretty simple:

1. Upload your video. Go to Create, choose Upload Video, and select the video from your computer.
2. Add the information. Give your video a title and description and add a thumbnail if you want one.
3. Add it to a playlist. If the video is part of a course or series, put it with the related lessons.
4. Choose your visibility. You can make the video public, unlisted, or private depending on how you want to use it.
5. Save and edit later. You can go back and change the title, description, links, and other information after uploading.
6. Share your video. Copy the link, embed the video on another website, or share it through other platforms.

I especially like the ability to embed YouTube videos on ELLLO. This lets students watch the video as part of the lesson rather than having to find it separately. I can also put a link to the ELLLO lesson in the YouTube description, so students who discover the video on YouTube can go to the full lesson and take the quiz or do other activities.

I didn't use YouTube very much for a while, but I'm starting to use it much more again. My main goal is to make it easier for people to discover my lessons and to experiment with some new types of activities. YouTube can get complicated if you want to use all of its features, but you really don't need to. For me, uploading videos, organizing them into playlists, and sharing or embedding them is enough to make it a very useful teaching tool.