Contents Page
AN INTRODUCTION TO E-LEARNING
3: Building learning and performance solutions
YouTube Mini Tutorial

YouTube is a website which hosts videos. If you want to make use of a video you find there, you can either link directly to it on the YouTube site or embed it into a web page or blog. You can also upload and share your own videos.

YouTube is a great resource for many copyright-free videos. Use YouTube to locate some videos of interest.

• Go to www.youtube.com

1. Search for videos by entering keyword(s) into the Search box, e.g. e-learning
2. A list of videos will be displayed that have been tagged with the keyword(s), and show also when each video was added to the site, by whom, how many people have viewed it and an average rating.
3. Select a video from the results lists shown and watch the video, using the controls underneath the video to manage your viewing.
4. Make a note of the URL if you want to direct people to the video to watch it; embed it in a web page or blog (see below); or download it (see below)
5. Subscribe to RSS feeds for new videos. (You could read the feeds in Firefox or Google Reader)

Note: In addition to the very many "user-generated" videos that you find on YouTube, more and more mainstream organisations are creating Channels to deliver their content, e.g.

• BBC
• The UK royal family
• Politicians, e.g.
  • Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister at Ask the PM
  • Barack Obama
• Musicians and music companies, like Sony

If you have a blog or website then you can embed your own or others videos in it, as in the example below, the Machine is Us/ing Us by Mike Wesch:

At the YouTube page where the video is displayed, you will see the HTML code to be used on the right hand side. This has been marked on the diagram below with an arrow. You will need to highlight this code, copy it and then paste it in the appropriate place in your website.

If you want to embed a YouTube video into a Wordpress blog, take a look at this video which explains how to embed the code.

• How to embed YouTube video in WordPress

Now try adding embedding a video into your blog or other website.

Firstly you will need to create your video. This can be done in a number of ways - you don't need sophisticated equipment.

• You could use a camcorder, a digital camera, a WebCam or even a mobile phone.
• You could create a video using YouTube's Quick Capture functionality.
• You could record your video online using Ustream (see Mini Tutorial 22), and then syndicate the recorded video to YouTube (once it is in the correct file format).

The video does however need to be in WMV, .AVI, .MOV, or .MPG format and up to 10 minutes long and no larger than 1,024 MB in size.

Once you have the video:

• Go to www.youtube.com

1. Sign up for an account - if you don't already have one (Note: You can now also comment on YouTube videos and add them to your Playlist)
2. To upload a video, select Upload
3. Add information about the video and provide keyword(s) to tag it
4. You can also select the broadcast options (i.e. you can mark it private if you wish), as well as sharing options (e.g. commenting, embedding etc)
5. Then select Upload
6. You can direct people to the relevant page in YouTube to view your video or embed it in a web page or blog (as described above)

Download a YouTube video

YouTube doesn't offer the facility to download videos, so if you want to download a YouTube video, then you will have to use another service. Here's one:

• YouTube Catcher

Note: that when you download the video, you will need a Flv player to watch the video. There's one available at the YouTube Catcher site. You can also convert the videos into other video formats.

YouTube is the most popular video hosting site around; it ranked very highly on our Top 100 Tools for Learning lists. Find out what the learning professionals who selected it as one of their Top 10 Tools think about it, here:

• Top 100 Tools for Learning : YouTube

1. What do you think of YouTube?
2. Share your YouTube hosted video with the other Community members.
3. How could you use YouTube within your organisation for learning or performance support?

Go to the 25Tools Community and add your thoughts to the YouTube Forum Discussion.

Read more about YouTube

• YouTube Reading List