Gueat Post By Heather Smith

New social media tactics can be scary for teachers to implement who are set in their ways and nervous about branching out into different realms of teaching. However YouTube has proved to be a significant source of providing quality information in a succinct and engaging manner that appeal to the younger generations. Combining a more laid-back and engaging approach to learning while still imparting crucial information makes it a slam dunk for educational strategies. This is particularly true for teaching history or social studies to students.

Why YouTube?

YouTube is a great treasure trove for history and social studies teachers because of the wealth of information that is stored within its video archives. The beauty of YouTube is that there isn’t much that you can’t find on the website; it boasts a range of video clips from old commercials to presidential campaigns that can be utilized to really show students history instead of just reading about it in a text book. You can use it to pull up different things such as old commercials to illustrate various points in history and demonstrate how much things have changed and progressed over the years.

What makes it different?

Because most films that teachers show tend to be feature-length documentary-type films you run the risk of losing a student’s interest almost immediately. If you think back to your own school days you probably can remember zoning out during longer films too – it’s almost inevitable because kids don’t have long attention spans and the videos are usually less than engaging, focusing more on delivering information than on being entertaining. YouTube counters this because all the film clips and videos on it are short and to the point making it hard for anyone to zone out during them.

How to use it?

Using short videos to complement your teaching will help break up the monotony that most students face at some point during a lecture or a video. You could be the best teacher in the world and you’re still going to battle holding students attention spans, but giving them something to switch over to at different points during the class will help you to keep them focused and attentive. Even a short, 10 minute clip will give them a much-needed break from listening to a lecture and will appeal to the different types of learners in the classroom. Since every student learns differently appealing to more than one sense will help to capture more students.

Recapturing Interest

Since history is so focused on facts, adding in video clips will help make these facts more memorable. By supplementing your classroom lectures with YouTube you will add in some flavor to your lectures that could be just what you need to regain the interest of your students that you may have lost through lectures alone.

Author Bio Heather Smith is an ex-nanny. Passionate about thought leadership and writing, Heather regularly contributes to various career, social media, public relations, branding, and parenting blogs/websites. She also provides value to hire a nanny by giving advice on site design as well as the features and functionality to provide more and more value to nannies and families across the U.S. and Canada. She can be available at H.smith7295 [at] k.