Clean Up YouTube Videos to Share with Students
YouTube is a fantastic source for videos in the classroom but teachers worry about distracting advertisements, inappropriate comments or annoying “suggested videos”. Good news! There are some very effective ways to make distraction-free YouTube videos available to students.
URL Hack for Full Screen YouTube Videos
Check out this incredibly simply URL hack that will allow you to view YouTube videos in full Screen mode. By placing a – in between the y and the u in youtube.com links, ads as well as suggested videos wil be removed.
Work-Arounds for YouTube “Video Unavailable” Problem
It can be frustrating when teachers have selected a YouTube video for classroom use only to discover the link results in “Video Unavailable” for students. This is due to age restrictions based on data associated with certain videos. It’s not unusual for perfectly appropriate videos to be incorrectly categorized. Age restrictions can be appealed by video owners, but that option doesn’t help teachers using videos created by others. What’s worse is that teachers can’t tell, in advance, if a video will be unavailable to students.
Below are two options for teachers to ensure videos they want students to view are not blocked.
Embed Videos in Google Slides
Even if a video is “Unavailble” from a student account, teachers can embed the YouTube in Google Slides. To insert a video in Google Slides, click Insert –> Video from the top menu. You can re-size the embedded video to fill the full slide. When sharing the link with students, be sure to share the full screen link so they can press the “play” button on the video. Need a refresher on how to share a link by adding a hyperlink to Google Docs or Slides? Check out a previous post on explaining how to add hyperlinks to your files.
A Redirect Link Back to your Video
The simple solution is to provide an alternative link to the video. Purify Video is a free tool available on GitHub, that generates a re-direct link back to your video. Side-stepping youtube’s incorrect block of the video that you really want your kids to see! Simply visit https://purify-video.github.io/ and paste the YouTube link for a new link you can share with students. Not sure which youtube.com link to copy? Click the share arrow under the video and “Copy Link”.
Over the years these tools and necessary work-arounds have come and gone. If you have some other helpful tips to share with us, please do so by commenting below! Necessity is the mother of invention and all of the teachers I know are very resourceful! Don’t be shy! Share!
