YouTube can be one of our best tools to use in the classroom once we figure out how to harness its power. One of the simplest ways to tap into the power of YouTube is to organize content by placing videos onto playlists. Playlists can contain content that others create as well as videos that you create and upload. Adding videos to playlists saves you time and the stress of having to search for a video minutes before you need it. The video below will show you how to upload your own videos, how to create and add videos to a playlist, and how to share a playlist.

Applications for Education
How many times a day do you have to tell students what they missed when they were gone? One of the things  I did at the end of each day was record a short screencast where I would walk students through what they missed if they were absent and I showed them exactly what they needed to do to get caught up. I would upload those screencasts to YouTube and then add them to the playlist for that particular class. Students knew they could access the link to the playlist from our classroom website so it dramatically cut back on the number of students asking me what we did when they were gone.

I also created playlists for each unit that I taught. If I found a video that I thought might be useful I added it to a generic playlist for the class. Once I previewed the video,  I would either move it to a shorter and more specific playlist so I could find it very quickly when I needed it or I would delete it from the generic list.

This video walks you through the process of uploading a screencast to YouTube, adding it to a playlist, and then sharing that playlist with others.