YouTube is the second largest search engine to Google, so it’s no wonder teachers use it to find educational resources. We wondered if there’s a place for public radio and Listen Edition on YouTube. We want to hear from YOU!  Tweet or Facebook this page with your reactions.

Audio + Video = YouTube

We know that the main point of YouTube is video, but we at Listen Edition believe students listening to a story can form more powerful pictures in their heads. But we recognize YouTube is where teachers find resources. So we made an experimental post on Listen Edition’s YouTube page.  Use this story with your students and let us know what you think.

NPR Tiny Desk Concerts

The only YouTube presence National Public Radio has on YouTube is with it’s Tiny Desk Concerts.  These are songs preformed and filmed in the space of an office cubicle.  They are compelling to watch because you wonder how a band can fit into the space – the piano player isn’t even sitting down?  But they sound amazing, which makes me think YouTube is not just about the video, it’s about the audio as well.

Teaching a specific skill or concept

YouTube is filled with resources from other teachers teaching the same things you might be in your classrooms. You can find videos on the energy cycle on Khan Academy or various math skills created from Educreations. An added bonus is that students can access it in their own time to re-listen to things they didn’t understand at first.

Building visual context while listening

You may be teaching about segregation in the South and would like students to have an image in their heads as they listen to radio stories and read their history passages. Doing a quick search on segregation on YouTube brings a compilation of photos that depict this event.

Looking to get video into the classroom, but not how to get started? Edutopia provided these helpful resources to make it easy. Classroom 2.0 also compiled a list of the 100 best YouTube videos for teachers here.