I’m new to this forum category so apologies if this is not the right place. I was just wondering if people have experience using YouTube as an educational resource based on their iNat work. In my day job I am a university professor (art history), so I’m used to the institution restricting access to knowledge. Late to the game I discover YouTube, which anyone can access for free, anywhere, any time – and it gives me total control. I put together and posted a short video of a sequence of wasp photos shot in downtown Toronto – 33 species – and it’s quite wonderful to discover the ability to compress three years of knowledge into two minutes. So I’m wondering if people here are using YouTube in similar ways – I want to learn. Many thanks, Ryan
Several iNatters have YouTube videos!
We also share links to relevant videos on the forum
I think it would be awesome to have a channel or two that we could all post, making it easier to share short vids and find others
I am confident many teachers use YouTube!
if you’re looking for something specific, you can describe exactly what you’re looking for, and folks might be able to help point you to that sort of thing.
otherwise, what you’re describing is so broad that i don’t think it’s realistic to capture everything on a single list. if you want to get some basic inspiration, i would start by searching the forum for “YouTube”, and looking at the various thread returned.
i used to think of a lot of my YouTube videos as complementing my iNat observations, but i think over time, i’m thinking more that my iNat observations complement my YouTube videos. beyond the flexibility that you mentioned, YouTube just has a bigger and wider audience and community than iNat. that’s not to say the iNat community isn’t great. it’s just different.
i also find personally find that i learn more and make more connections by recording videos than just taking photos or sound separately, and i find that people are more engaged when viewing an interesting video vs looking at an interesting observation.
This is really helpful, thanks greatly. It’s not so much subject matter as how people are using the different platforms that interests me – exactly your thoughts in the last two paragraphs. Much appreciated.
I used YouTube to post class material when we suddenly had to teach online during the pandemic. I also used it to post semi-regular phenology walks checking what plants were blooming for our local native plant society chapter. I enjoyed creating those videos but it took a lot of time. Over the last 1-2 years I have gotten very fed up with the increasing amount and frequency of ads disrupting my content though, even non-public class materials tied to my university account, and have pretty much given up on it. I don’t want the students to have to waste time on dealing with that.
Yes this is a problem. I’m looking at Internet Archive for hosting my educational materials (all CC/open source) for exactly this reason. You have to get it out of the hand of the tech bros and the finance people. I was just reading what happened to Udemy, so depressing
Yes, I’m the lead on a National Geographic funded project called MacroBlitz which inspires and empowers people to add aquatic macroinvertebrates photos to iNat. We have a whole YouTube channel with all of our training videos, including about how to upload to iNat though these will need a refresh with the new app.