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!

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!

Fellow educators, we hope you are safe and healthy during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have received a much larger volume of emails than typical regarding terms of use and suggested use, and as a team of only two sisters, we are struggling to respond to all of them. (We've never been major emailers as it is; we don't even have an email newsletter). 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. We want to be able to support you in this challenging 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).
-Free Recap Student Handouts
-Comics (Consider asking students thought provoking questions about them: what is the comic trying to show? What vocab is involved?)
-GIFs (Consider asking students to "narrate" the GIF. What is it trying to show? What are the weaknesses of the GIF model?)
-ALL of our videos
-By the way, we made some fun, FREE science backgrounds that work on computer backgrounds or some virtual meeting platforms (such as Zoom).

Can I post your handouts, comics, and/or GIFs?
Yes, you can post our comics and GIFs! Yes, you can post the handouts if they are the free student handouts! (If they are paid handouts on select topics on TpT, the terms of use allow them to be placed behind a password protected website, Google class code, etc.) We ask that if you make answer keys using any of our content or purchase the answer keys we produce to help support ourselves, please keep all answer keys behind a class code, password, etc. as it makes it difficult for others to use our handouts with answer keys publicly available.

You said on your website that a school device and/or network filters can be set to allow certain YouTube videos to show and block all others?
Yes, although this would require an email to one of your school or district IT technology staff members. The following information could be sent to them. 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 even 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 (many 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 

Since your handouts are PDFs, how can students write on them to turn in during distance learning?

Here are two helpful options!

A) 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

or

B) 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, and DocHub we believe is still free. 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!  

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.

And we're so excited to be a part of the beta launch! 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

If you're a student, we made a video with study tips when using our videos.

Well, it’s almost review season. Final exams, EOCs, and more are approaching! We like to help with that. 

In 2017, we made a biology GIF review for class discussion. We still think it’s pretty awesome; you can check it out here.

In 2018, we made a video designed for students with some study tips.

But this year, 2019, we’ve really extended ourselves because we will be releasing a MEGA REVIEW VIDEO on Sunday, April 14th! Yes, it’s called Stroll Through the Playlist. While it’s way longer than our regular videos---as our regular videos are never over 10 minutes---it is a great way to refresh your memory of major concepts and vocabulary. It can also be a great indicator of whether you may want to re-watch the full content video for a topic or do some more in-depth studying.

One thing that is especially exciting is that we’re going to try using the YouTube Premiere feature! This means that if you join the video link at the exact time that the video premieres (4/14/2019- Sunday- at 7:30 pm CT), you’ll watch it live with us, and you can participate in the live chat typing window if you’d like.

​This graphic has some info about YouTube Premiere:

A few additional things to know:

• If you subscribe to our channel and have your notifications on, you’ll be notified of the premiere starting.
• Once the premiere starts, it has a 2 minute countdown before the video actually plays. The live-chat typing window will be available beforehand. If you want to participate in the chat typing window, you will have to be sure you are logged into your YouTube account.
• On a computer, the live chat will show on the right. On a mobile device,  you'll see the "live chat" option underneath the video near the 'share' button.
• At 7:30 pm CT, the video will play live. You can’t fast forward in it, because it’s playing live, but you can go backwards or pause it. If you join late, you’ll join where it’s playing live, but you can go back in the video if you want to.
• This does NOT involve a webcam at all.
• Feel free to provide us feedback or ask a quick question in the live chat typing window while the video is playing! If you have a longer question, you may want to post it as a regular YouTube comment as it will give us more time to respond. The chat window can move fast so we may not be able to get to everything.
• The video becomes a normal video after playing live, and the link doesn’t change.
• Here's the video link: https://youtu.be/7xeFP0SEDdc

Keep in mind this is our first time to try out the new YouTube Premiere feature. We love trying new things, and we’re sure there may be some unexpected hiccups along the way. But, of course, that’s how we all grow.  :)

Hope to see you on April 14th at 7:30 pm central on our Amoeba Sisters YouTube Channel!