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Teacher’s Guide to Using SchoolTube

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SchoolTube is a K12-focused platform for creating, hosting, and sharing videos. Our use within K12 spans from the classroom (sharing lesson videos) to the school board room (sharing board meeting recordings, superintendent messages, etc.). This article is focused on helping teachers get the most out of their SchoolTube accounts. Let's get started. 

Create a FREE* SchoolTube Account. If you do not have an account, follow the steps on this page to create a FREE* SchoolTube account. 

Learn How Others Use SchoolTube.  Before you start digging into the user concepts and training videos below, we recommend learning how other teachers, schools and districts, use SchoolTube. For this, watch the two videos in the SchoolTube Showcase Playlist.

The Basics. We recommend that teachers create one or more channels in which to publish their videos. The process is simple, upload a video, publish it to a channel, add it to a playlist within the channel (optional), and then share the video, channel, or playlist URL with your students.

SchoolTube offers a wide feature set to help teachers create, manage and share videos as follows:

Review all training tutorials here.

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Uploading Videos. The process of uploading a video is very simple. As shown above, navigate to the ADD NEW link, then select Media Upload. From there, you will browse to a video on your device, select it and upload & save it. Then to publish, you will see Publish in Schools    Publish in Channels. Click Publish in Channels to open and select your personal channel(s). Then save once more. Any video uploaded, but not published will be held in your MyMedia folder in private status.  If you attempt to share a private video, viewers will see an Access Denied message.

Note: By default, your school also has a public and private channel under Publish in Schools. You can also publish videos there, but those are not specific to a teacher and are not as easy to share and manage. Therefore, we recommend creating your own channel(s).

Sharing Your Videos.  As noted above, we recommend that teachers create one or more channels in which videos are published and organized.  For example, if you are a math teacher and you teach Algebra I, II, and Trig, you could create 3 separate channels for each class. Within each class, you could further organize your videos into playlists - each focusing on a specific unit or section of math.  From there, you can share videos with students by sharing your entire channel, sharing specific playlists, or sharing specific videos. Each channel, playlist, and video has a specific URL that appears at the top of the browser page. Playlist and video URLs can also be found under the video player within the "Share" link under the player.

Many teachers share videos within an LMS system like Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas, etc.  The most basic sharing is done via pasting the video/channel/playlist link into the LMS page.  In some cases, teachers can also embed SchoolTube videos into an LMS - see below. 

Embedding Videos.  SchoolTube videos and playlists can be embedded into a website and into certain LMS systems.  Under the video or playlist, you will find a "share" link and within there you will find the HTML embed code. This code can be pasted into the website page (via HTML editor) and when saved, will display within the body of the page. This is a great way to share videos with students because it removes distractions, but it does take extra effort.  Learn how to embed videos and embed playlists. 

Linking YouTube Videos: Many teachers come to SchoolTube looking for a safe place to share videos and many are specifically looking for a way to share YouTube videos - especially if their school network blocks YouTube. SchoolTube offers a way to link and share YouTube videos where the video plays from YouTube but through the SchoolTube site. This removes the surrounding YouTube suggested videos and comments. YouTube video ads, if present, will still play.  Because there is an open link to YouTube behind the scenes, if your network blocks YouTube, the SchoolTube-YouTube process will also be blocked. Sorry!

Wow! That was a lot of info, but if you take the time early to learn how to use SchoolTube, you will become an expert and your students and parents will love it!