Learning with YouTube

YouTube offers music videos, sketches, and let's-play videos, as well as clips with helpful information on school topics.  The videos explain certain topics in an entertaining way and offer summaries or an overview. Many of the videos relate specifically to the content of a particular grade. They are therefore suitable for reviewing material not fully understood at school, as well as for revision or exam preparation. Teachers can also be inspired by the vivid and realistic explanations and use the videos in their lessons.

In the meantime, YouTube has also created its own page with Lernen zu Hause , where a selection of videos on school topics curated by the company can be found.

Now: Get active yourself!

Young people are generally familiar with explainer videos from a variety of contexts. For those for whom school-related content on YouTube has not played a role so far, they are probably at least familiar with Let's Plays, make-up tutorials or other how-to videos. This can inspire people to get active themselves: Why not create an explainer video yourself? This can happen, for example, as part of a group work or project in a school subject. The groups can work on a complex of topics and communicate this to their fellow students in the form of the explainer video. Subsequent grades can also benefit from this.

Even if little or no technical equipment is available, students can record explainer videos with their own smartphones. When creating the explainer videos, they can draw on their existing knowledge of how to use their own smartphones and their experience with explainer videos on YouTube. New knowledge is linked with familiar facts from the students' lives. This can have a motivating effect on the development of the topics to be explained. Teachers can also create their own explanatory videos and make them available to their students or the general public. It is up to the teacher to decide whether he or she wants to show him or herself in front of the camera, use an animated animation style, or just explain from the off.

YouTube channels such as "Simple Club" or "die Merkhilfe" offer entertaining explanations of certain topics, summaries or an overview. Many videos relate specifically to the content of a particular grade. They are therefore suitable for reviewing material not fully understood at school, as well as for revision or exam preparation.

There are also channels that are less concerned with specific lesson content. However, they can generate enthusiasm for scientific or socially relevant topics. For example, the chemist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim uses her channel "MaiLab" to check the scientific content of advertising promises made by cosmetics companies.

How can you creatively tackle topics relevant to teaching and thus arouse the enthusiasm of your students? The math musician "DorFuchs" and Michael Sommer in "Sommer's World Literature to Go" show how this can work. For example, students can memorize the important p-q formula by listening to a musical catchy tune. Or they can get to know the characters and plot of the current reading using Playmobil figures.