 How do I submit a translation for your YouTube videos? Due to YouTube's decision to remove the ability of the community to translate subtitles directly through our channel, we ask for our community's help to submit translations on our new Google Form here. It follows a similar procedure to YouTube's Community Contributed Subtitle feature before it was removed by YouTube in September 2020. UPDATE: October 14, 2020
How do I get credited with my name as the translator? Or remain anonymous? We greatly appreciate the volunteers from the community that have spent time translating the video transcript. On our Google Form link at the top of this page, you will note that we have an option to remain anonymous or to be credited. If you wish to be credited, the form will ask how you would like the credit to look. We also ask if you would like us to place a credit in the video details (which you can see when you click "show more" under a video) or if you would like to place a credit line yourself in the subtitles you submit (at the beginning or the end), or BOTH. How do I see what translations exist for one of your videos? Go to any of our videos on our YouTube channel. Once our video is playing, click the gear icon and click "subtitles" to see all available languages. So I made and submitted subtitles on your form. What happens now? Once a week, we go into the form and check to see if there are any contributed subtitles. We scan the with Google translate and if they follow along the original script, we publish them on our page. If you selected to be credited on the Google form, we will place the credit in the way you listed it on the form. They will be permanently available unless you choose to have us remove them, which you can choose at any time. Do you allow dubbing of your videos? Unfortunately, our videos cannot be dubbed due to our licensing. Our videos can only be hosted on our YouTube channel. Please do not download them and upload them somewhere else as this violates our terms of use as well as YouTube's Terms of Service. Thank you so much for your help, community! Looking for other ways to support us? Visit our support page. If you've been directed to this page, we are trying to use a YouTube card feature to remind you to please check our pinned comment underneath the video for an important note. Most of our videos DO have a pinned comment. [YouTube does not yet have the ability to put the note within the card itself] As lifelong learning amoebas, we find a lot of value from feedback. Feedback helps us grow and improve. Sometimes, it's brought to our attention that we need a clarification note. Sometimes, it is brought to our attention that there is a mispronunciation or mistaken sentence that needs to be corrected. Sometimes, there is updated information. Sometimes, we learn something new and really think it's important to add that detail or exception. For this reason, we utilize pinned comments. Pinned comments allow us to put important notes about our videos!  An example of a pinned comment. You can find this on our Mitosis vs. Meiosis video. To learn more about how we try to make edits on or videos, please check out this post here! Our most frequent need for a pinned comment though tends to be due to the many AMAZING exceptions and details that we find are difficult to address in such short videos of under 10 minutes. We do like to pin comments about those amazing details and exceptions, and sometimes our description additionally has further reading suggestions where you can learn more about them too!  Working from home and attending lots of virtual meetings? We have free 1920x1080 sciart backgrounds! Perfectly sized to spice up your next online meeting tool (example: Zoom) or computer background with a bit of biology! Click the "Download File" button below the image you like. P.S. Teaching from a distance? We have some frequent answered questions regarding our resources here.      LAST UPDATED: October 15, 2020 Fellow educators, we hope you are safe and healthy during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that schools worldwide will be making difficult decisions on whether they open face to face, virtually, or both. We want to be able to support you in this challenging time! We continue to receive a larger volume of emails than typical regarding terms of use and suggested use, so we wanted to try to keep this page as updated as possible. As we start to look at the majority of question types, we thought we could proactively put some of the question types we have been receiving with some helpful suggestions. News for October 2020: We have contacted Nearpod to ask if we can create activities for this program. While our Unlectured Series features slides that could be used in Nearpod or Google Slides or any program that takes .ppt slides, we are also hoping to explore additional features this program specifically offers. We will update soon. Please take a look at our frequent questions below during this time! What items do you have for free?
MOST of our items are FREE!! There are some items are not, and those items are critical to us being able to support our work as we now do this full-time. Just a note: please remember that "free" does not mean that they can be placed in items that you sell (for example, within a resource on TpT). See our terms of use to learn more.
Links to FREE Items:
Can I post your videos on my PowerPoint, Google Slide, Google Classroom, LMS platform, teacher website, etc?
If linking to the video on YouTube or using the YouTube embed code, yes! By the way, Google Slides automatically is using the YouTube embed code when you go to "Insert->Video->and paste in a YouTube video link. (Google owns YouTube!) But please do not download our video files and then upload the video file online somewhere or take a screenshot video of our video and post that somewhere. This is not only very harmful to full-time YouTube creators, but it also violates our licensing agreements and YouTube's terms of service. More info here. You can also consider using our learning playlist link which has our videos organized by "chapters" where students can see an entire sequence of biology videos. Can I post your handouts, comics, and/or GIFs?
Yes, you can post our comics and GIFs (as long as its not placed in a product that you sell, as outlined on our terms)! Yes, you can post the handouts if they are the free student handouts (as long as they are not placed in a product that you sell, as outlined on our terms)! If they are paid handouts on select topics from TpT, the terms of use allow them to be placed behind a password protected website, Google class code, etc. As we mention in our terms of use and also all over our handout page, if you make answer keys using any of our content (or if you purchase our answer keys which we use to support ourselves) please keep all answer keys behind a class code or password as publicly available answer keys make it difficult for others to use. Many of our resources include open-ended questions and this also takes that away from them. Speaking of handouts, your handouts are PDFs. I want my students to write on them though since I'm teaching remotely?
The reason our resources have been in a PDF format are because (A) they can be viewed and not distorted in any type of device and (B) PDFs are more protective of our images and work.
However, there are options for being able to have students use these remotely! A) If you prefer for students to write on the PDFs electronically and turn in to you, there are some tools that work in Chrome that can help with this. While we are not affiliated with these tools, some of the Chrome tools we mention on our handout page are DocHub and Kami. These tools allow for annotating and writing on PDFs. Additionally, if you do a web search "DocHub for teachers," there are some articles written by teachers about how that tool can be useful with students! Many LMS systems will actually allow you to write on PDFs. A quick search online for "How to annotate on a PDF in ____" with the LMS system you use may provide additional options besides these extensions. or B) If your school or district permits Google forms to be used, consider creating a google form. If you just create one google form, it can work for all your students and for multiple handouts! An screenshot of an example form is shown BELOW. It can list names of Amoeba Sisters handouts (so the same form can be used multiple times as you can sort by handout name), and a space for students to write in their answers when they look at the handout. They are very easy to make and use, and they can be an easy way to collect responses for evaluation. Here are the instructions from Google about Google forms: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6281888?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en 
You have on your website that a school device and/or network filters can be set to allow certain YouTube videos to show and block all other YouTube videos?
Yes, but this conversation would require an email to one of your school or district IT technology staff members. YouTube is one of the largest video hosting platforms available, and there are many educational videos available exclusively on its platform. We have observed that many large school districts in our area have opened YouTube in different filtering capacities and here are just some examples: (A) some districts provide YouTube access for teachers and then allow teachers to "approve" certain videos that are the only videos accessible to students using their own filtering software, (B) some districts will approve specific YouTube channels in advance on their filter for teachers and students and only those channels will be accessible, (C) some districts enable YouTube's restricted mode on all staff and student devices and go through digital citizenship education etc. Overall, this is a determination that needs to be discussed and evaluated within a district to make a decision that is best for them. If it is helpful, we do have the ability to contact YouTube directly if an IT department has concerns or questions regarding filtering YouTube. If choosing to use our videos, our actual video files (or recordings of our videos) cannot be uploaded into other platforms as outlined on our terms of use. Our videos must be either linked to or embedded from our YouTube channel using the YouTube embed code. Google (who owns YouTube) explains here how entire channels can be approved OR even specific videos on a school device or network https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/more-ways-for-schools-organizations-to/ They have an additional help page: https://support.google.com/a/topic/6206681 . In addition to the above, or as an alternative to the above, if a district has student assigned devices (some schools are now 1:1), the district can set up "restricted mode" on the devices they give out. YouTube Restricted mode hides comments and filters out many inappropriate videos from the search. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en How can I: change the video speed, see video subtitles or a transcript, change the language, see a table of contents for your videos, etc?
Last Updated: October 15, 2020 YouTube. We're so grateful to have a platform where we can share our work, and the platform also helps (partially) with supporting our work so we can continue to create. A while back, we wrote a post about tips for viewers using YouTube to watch edu videos. We wanted to update and expand on that based on what we've learned over the years. 1- Captions/subtitles on edu videos have so many benefits.Click that "CC" button at the bottom right to turn them on. Captions not only increase accessibility, but they can also be useful if you are in an area where you can not play the sound. They can also be a nice tool to see science words spelled out. Find a typo in our captions? We have a form on our contact page so we can get that fixed. 2- Captions/subtitles on edu videos can be available in different languages!Many times this is thanks to our amazing contributors using YouTube's community contributed subtitle feature! Check out the screenshot video below for more info about how to see subtitles in different languages. Important Update: On September 28, 2020, YouTube removed the feature that allows the community to contribute new subtitles. This affects all YouTube channels. However, any previously created subtitles that were published before this date will remain! If you are interested in volunteering to translate our subtitles, please visit our Google Form. 3- But also: transcripts!Maybe you knew that most YouTube edu videos offer captions. But did you know that you can also access the video transcript? Just click the three dots at the bottom right of the video---and then "open transcript." Screenshot below! After opening the transcript, you will see it open at the top right. Click the three buttons next to the word "Transcript" and you can also toggle the timestamps on and off as well!  4- Ads on YouTube that you don't want to see?While you'll find ads on many Google services, including edu YouTube videos, did you know that you (the viewer) can have more control over ads you see? You can turn off ad personalization or update preferences on your Google account: https://adssettings.google.com 5- Time stamped table of contents?Many edu creators create a time stamped hyperlinked table of contents. Sometimes it's in the video details (just click "show more" when reading the video description to see them) or as a pinned comment. The time-stamped table of contents can help you navigate the video easily. Update: If a video has a table of contents, now it will also immediately show as chapters on the video progress bar! P.S. Just to add, if you make a YouTube comment that has a time in it (ex. 1:00), it turns it into a hyperlinked time stamp.  6- Too fast? Slow it down!Sometimes those edu videos may go a little too fast! Did you know you can slow it down? (Or speed it up?) The video speed is an option when you click the gear at the bottom right of a video.  7- Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to stop and skip!As an educator, Pinky found those keyboard shortcuts so helpful when needing to pause the video to ask questions or skip back or forward. If you're a teacher, you can even consider having a wireless keyboard so that you can control the video in the back of the room and start discussions from anywhere. Edu videos with engaging graphics (in our case, cartoons!) can make great discussion starters. 8- So many ways to share... It's important to know how to share YouTube videos by using the YouTube link (or using the YouTube embed code, which is enabled on many edu channels)! Most are familiar with YouTube links, but if you want a nice, streamlined look with a YouTube video on your class website or LMS, you may want to look at the YouTube embed feature, which will be available on videos if the channel enabled it. Just click "share" underneath the video, and click on "embed." You can also embed entire playlists so you could embed our entire learning playlist! YouTube embeds still feed from the YouTube channel itself. Need more detailed instructions on how to embed? Check this out from YouTube. [NOTE: Embedding from YouTube using the YouTube embed code is very different from "ripping" and uploading a YouTube video, which is generally a terms of use violation. This means using software or a website to download a YouTube video and then posting it somewhere like on a school website, on social media, or on another YouTube channel typically violates the creators' rights as well as YouTube's terms of service. To avoid this, please make sure you are using either the YouTube link or the YouTube embed code, as those actually feed through the creator's channel.] 9- Expand those video details---and the pinned comment (if there is one)!Many viewers may not realize the huge amount of information in a lot of edu video details (video descriptions). By clicking that "show more" underneath the video description, you can expand to see everything the edu creator has placed there. In our videos, we include references, further reading suggestions, our music credit, and additional links about our content. A pinned comment is a comment that the edu creator has placed at the top of their comments. In many cases, it may be a comment from the edu creator themselves. The comment may have a clarification or important video note.  10-Explore "YouTube Learning Playlists!"We're so excited to be a part of the beta launch of YouTube Learning Playlists that started in the summer of 2019! There are a lot of YouTube learning playlists that you can explore here, and this is our biology learning playlist. Learning playlists include objectives, chapters, and a dedicated space without suggested videos. We're excited to see how it evolves.  Thanks for reading our tips! For more info about our videos specifically, check out our videos page.
Also, if you're an educator, we made a video specifically on suggestions for using our videos in biology. High school or college student? We made a video with study tips when using our videos. |
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