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UPDATE: We updated this old post with now 10 helpful YouTube tips for edu videos! Please see the new post here! https://www.amoebasisters.com/pinkys-ed-tech-favorites/10-youtube-tips-from-an-edu-youtuber-duo For the most part, we love YouTube as a platform for our videos. YouTube allows us to host our videos and build a community. We thought we'd share some YouTube tips for our viewers that we've learned along the way. Before we start, however, we want to mention the role of educational videos on YouTube. Just like most educational strategies or resources, our educational videos are a tool---and like all tools---it is how they are used that determines their effectiveness. We have a video with 3 creative ways to use our videos that you may find useful! And now for some tips... 1. Restricted Mode in YouTube Are you an educator or parent concerned about inappropriate videos or comments in YouTube? Did you know there is a restricted mode that you can easily turn on so that these will not appear? In fact, an institution's network administrator can turn this on for an entire institution (like a school district). More info here: support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en For young children, there is an app called "YouTube Kids" for Apple and Android which limits what is shown. But hooray--- you can find us on there! 2. Turn off the Pop-Up Annotations Annotations are the pop-up messages that YouTube creators can put in their videos. Note: Annotations are not the same thing as advertisements. Sometimes annotations are helpful pieces of information or links that the creator has added, but in some videos you watch, they may be distracting in the classroom. In May 2017, YouTube stopped the ability for creators to make new annotations, but all the annotations already present will remain. You can turn off pop up annotations using the sequence in the screenshot below!  3. Captions Many educational YouTube videos have captions. We do, too, for all of our videos! If you click the CC button at the bottom right of the video, you can see the captions in English. Captions are important to us for accessibility. Find any typos? On our contact us page, we have a form you can fill out for any corrections. 4. Free Music from YouTube to Download and Use in Your Creations It can be tough to find royalty free music when you or your students are creating that you can place directly into your video creations. Awesome music for video projects is offered by the YouTube Audio library. You can preview them all directly on the website before downloading! www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music 5. View a YouTube Video Transcript Want to see the entire YouTube transcript? By clicking the three dots at the bottom right of the YouTube video (see screenshot below), you can click "open transcript." The entire video transcript will open at the right. Once the transcript appears at the right, you will even have the option to allow it to show with the timestamps (default) or not show timestamps. Typo with our transcript? On our contact us page, we have a form you can fill out for any corrections. 
Click "Share" underneath the YouTube video, and you will have the option to type in the time that you want the video to start. This is really helpful if you are an educator and only want to show your class a quick segment of a video that is midway in the video. After selecting and typing in the time, you will notice the link changes to include that start time. This link can now be bookmarked, and it will play the video from that specific point. *BONUS TIP Added August 2018: Want more control over the ads that play in YouTube? Ever wish you had more control over the types of ads that show up on YouTube videos? Your Google ad settings allow you to make some changes to how ads are personalized- or even opt out of ad personalization- and this goes for those ads you see in YouTube as well. https://adssettings.google.com
 Last Updated: August 2022 We released a "behind the scenes" YouTube Short where you can see our process for making our videos. It usually takes us about a month to make a regular content video. Details about the specific tools we use can be found below: How did you make your videos when you first started? When we started (in 2013), we only used a cell phone to record audio, Moviemaker (free) to edit our videos, and Microsoft Paint to illustrate. You can see our milestones here from when we first started. How do you generally create Amoeba Sisters videos (and comics and GIFs) now? For our videos, Pinky writes a script and records the audio of her reading it. Petunia takes the script to draw all of the individual images. Then, Petunia's individual images are timed to Pinky's audio in movie editing software. With enough pictures, we can sometimes time them close enough together to give an animated look, but we aren't using animating software. Drawing Software- Petunia has no artistic background, but she practices a lot. She currently uses the software Autodesk's Sketchbook for the illustrations that go into our videos and GIFs. All of the illustrations- for videos and for GIFs- are individual image files. Occasionally, Petunia uses a program called Procreate to make some of her comics as shown here in her speed draw. Drawing Hardware- It's hard to imagine (or maybe it's not ;P), but Petunia used a simple computer mouse to draw for a long time for a lot of our videos. As her drawings have evolved, she currently uses a Cintiq 22 HD drawing tablet by Wacom. This can be connected to her desktop computer. When on the go, Petunia can use a Microsoft Surface laptop or an iPad. Audio Software- Pinky still uses the free program Audacity to record. It works for both PC and Apple computers. While you don't technically need any audio software (we didn't in the beginning), it adds a lot of awesome features like cutting things out or removing background noise. Audio Hardware- Pinky currently uses this Yeti microphone that she connects to her laptop. She also made a "portable sound booth" to put her microphone in which we think has made a difference in our more recent videos. You can find a lot of instructions for making one of these online! Movie Editing Software- After wanting some extra features, we switched over to Camtasia, which we really like. Images drawn by Petunia and audio recorded by Pinky are placed into this program to make our videos. I notice you animate some portions of your videos. What tool do you use to animate? We don't really do any fancy animating. Our videos are a series of illustrations timed to audio, but when the illustrations are placed closely together with minor alterations, they can give an animated look. To do this, we create an image, save it, reopen it to make a slight change (such an image rotation or position change), save the new image, and repeat--- and we eventually end with a series of images that can appear animated once they are all put into a movie editing program in order. If trying this out, we would suggest naming your images numerically in sequence as shown below.  Reviewing? We have a resource that uses our GIFs in a powerful way! We think reviews can be great with visuals and questions- and these Google Slides use our Amoeba Sisters GIFs (animations)! Click the GIF below to access our "Biology Discussion Topics with GIFs!" These can make GREAT warm-ups and exit tickets, and they also can be powerful in facilitating discussion. Instructions on how to use and present it will be found in the second slide. Click the purple button below to access entire slideshow. Sorry, this GIF review is not set to allow for editing, but you can get the individual GIFs found in this slideshow to use in a different way. Visit our GIF page. Are you looking for a print-out? Scroll down at bottom of this post for a PDF copy.  Click purple GIF button above to access. Due to GIF animations, this is too large as a PowerPoint. However, in Google Slides, you need only click "present" (at top right) to present it just like a slideshow. Do you need a PDF of the questions that can be printed? You can download it below. (Note: GIFs are not animated in a PDF. See our GIFs page to access individual GIFs.) 
We're so happy to be on this list (check out this link for other great science suggestions on the Chromebook)!
One of us was at an awesome training today on Google Classroom, and the presenter mentioned a Chrome app for annotating on PDFs. Our immediate thought: this would also be fantastic in regard to our handouts! If you use our PDF handouts and want students to be able to annotate on them digitally, you need to try out Doc Hub.
Doc Hub is a free Chrome app that allows students to sign in with their Google account and easily annotate on a PDF! It's awesome. Here's a quick silent screenshot video showing how it works here (on our Twitter): https://twitter.com/AmoebaSisters/status/797801539574317056 |
About This Page2025 UPDATE:
From our early days, this used to be a page where Pinky would share free edtech websites, apps, online resources, response systems, and other tools that she found free and useful at the time of the post for teachers. Technology evolves quickly, and some of the tools or resources mentioned may have changed, may no longer be free, may have been discontinued, or function differently from the date listed on the post. As we advise, always read the terms and privacy policy of any technology tool that you plan to use. Disclosure? This blog does not promote affiliate links. Any links to partners will be clearly disclosed within the post. |
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