Youtube: My new teaching assistant

I've had a YouTube account for a while, but never really used it that much until a few months back. Teaching ICT, I'm on a mission to make my learning as mobile and flexible for my students as possible, so aspects of the flipped classroom model appeal to me, such as the use of videos for education. I started using a combination of www.screenr.com to create video tutorials and YouTube to host them. What has happened to my student's learning and my teaching as a result of this?

The bottom line is this: The students in my classes using my YouTube channel are producing work a year ahead of the equivalent year group last year.

How did this happen? I am using my YouTube channel as a sort of teaching assistant. In other words I demo and explain the lesson, address misconceptions and questions from the students as normal, but then I have a few video tutorials of my demos on my YouTube channel. If they get stuck, I can refer them to the relevant video.

Before I used this method I would have students throughout the lesson asking for reassurance, help or guidance because they had forgotten how to do the task (maybe a reflection on my teaching). Now this doesn't happen I find that my time is freed up during the lesson to help students in a more in-depth one to one basis. I can also 'live mark' with my iPad, giving verbal feedback to students on a regular basis in the lesson, whilst noting down comments in iDoceo.

Because of this extra in-lesson time, I can push my students further and suggest more advanced things for them to try. One example of this is last year's Year 7s were making games in Gamemaker which were good, but fairly static with limited input, this year, the Year 7's are making scrolling shoot-em up adventure games. As a result their attainment has gone up and they are producing much more advanced work.

How do I make the videos? Very simple:

1 - Record a screencast with www.screenr.com. Max recording time is 5 mins (this is good, too long = too boring).
2 - Upload to your YouTube channel directly from Screenr.
3 - Put it into a playlist so your students can find it easily.

If you're interested to see some examples of how I'm using it, check out www.youtube.com/bgsict and go to the playlists. Currently the Photoshop, Flash and Gamemaker are the most active ones.

Also, why YouTube? Well, it can be accessed from pretty much any device with an internet connection, which fits my need for flexibility in learning. Also, as any one who has worked with digital video knows, it is a bit of a dark art. YouTube makes it easy to upload and stream without fiddling about with codecs.

So, does YouTube make me a lazy, or more effective teacher? So far I would say more effective, because of the impact it has had on my students and time management. I am conscious of the danger of just saying "look at YouTube" for today's lesson and as with all tech, as long as it is integrated into my lesson and not 'my lesson', then things should go OK. 

Maybe soon I'll be replaced with a hologram........