Come celebrate reaching the one million subscribers milestone with us! If you're new to YouTube Premiere and want to understand how it works, check out the info below! 

Why the celebration for this milestone?
Reaching the milestone of 1,000,000 subscribers results in a YouTube creator award known as the "Gold Play Button." We never imagined making this milestone, and we are just so grateful to our subscribers for helping us reach this point. If you'd like to learn more about our milestones, check out our milestone page here. If you'd like to learn more about our channel, check out our page here.

What is a YouTube Premiere?
It's like a "watch party" on YouTube that you join just by going to the YouTube link. The video is pre-recorded, but we are all there live watching it together at the same spot in time. When you join, it will be playing live. In addition, there will be a live chat window that is up before the video plays and stays up during the video as well.

So you will be joining the live chat 30 minutes before the video actually starts?
Yes, the live chat typing window will be available before the video premieres, and we will join the live chat at the time listed on the graphic at the top of the page (about 30 minutes before the video actually plays). 

Tell me more about the live chat. Does it involve a webcam?
No! Neither you nor us will be on a webcam. The live chat is a chat box that you type into. You must be logged in to your YouTube/Google account in order to type anything. On a computer, the live chat shows on the right. On a mobile device, you'll see it underneath the video near the share button.

What kind of things do you talk about in the live chat?
Well, we want to let everyone know how appreciative we are of our subscribers!! We might talk about some of our favorite videos, and we'd like to know yours too. We may also talk about our journey, and we want to hear about your teaching or studying. Please feel free to ask questions! While we won't likely be able to answer all of them, we'll be able to pick up a few.

Do you moderate the live chat?
We have volunteer moderators that do. There's a filter on the live chat as well. However, neither of those things are perfect. If you notice something that violates YouTube's community guidelines that shows up in the live chat, you can also flag a comment to help our moderators. Remember best practices when chatting on any public platform: you should never give personal information such as your full name, address, phone number, etc. If we see that, we remove it and the user's future posts will no longer show in the live chat.

Then the video actually plays at 8pm CT on April 6, 2021?
Yes, there will be a 2 minute countdown, and then the video will play. The live chat window will stay up and we will still be present on the live chat, but since we want you to enjoy the video, we likely won't be typing much at that point.

What if I join late?
You can join in late! Just know that when you join, since it's playing "live," it will bring you to the same point in the video as everyone else.

What if I miss it but still want to see it?
If you subscribe to our channel and have your notifications on, you’ll be notified of the premiere starting! But if you can't make it, the video posts like a normal video after playing live. The link will not change, and you can view it anytime afterwards.

Link to YouTube Premiere: https://youtu.be/cgag8J-AShU

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 (the link to it is at the top of this page), you will note that there is 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 already exist for one of your videos to determine if a translation is needed?
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 languages that our community has so kindly contributed. If the language you are interested in adding is not listed, we are still in need of that translation for the video!

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!

LAST UPDATED: December 21, 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 Spring Semester 2021:

• We continue to update a dropbox folder you can access at the top of our handout page that has all of our free video recap handouts in one place as we know that offers more convenience. 
• We will be making some update videos this spring including a new updated video on cellular respiration and a new updated video on photosynthesis. It will include improved audio and illustrations! However, we do NOT delete old videos so links and YouTube embeds will still function. We'll only move them out of our playlist and replace them with the updated version.
• Due to popular demand, we are going to be making some more Unlectured topics to create a second series! We'll continue to make sure they use flattened images that will work in a variety of edtech tools that accept .ppt tools. We had previously looked into making Nearpods, but unfortunately the space limit on the free version isn't large enough for our illustrations.
• Please take a look at our frequent questions below during this time! 

Note: This post is often updated due to changes that occur in YouTube.
LAST UPDATED: November 9, 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.

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.