YouTube Instructional Video Review

This week I reviewed four YouTube instructional videos, two that are of interest to me personally, and two that I found in my content area (K-12 teaching and Instructional Design). The two personal favorites were Half-Baked Harvest and Yoga with Adrienne. Half-Baked Harvest is a cooking YouTube hosted by Tiegan Gerard, a creative cook that shares her recipes and how-to’s based on seasonal foods. These Youtubes are simplified, showing the process—they are meant to accompany her recipes (which are attached to her YouTubes) and are set to music. I found her Youtubes after following her on Instagram and using her recipes on her website. I have made probably 40 of her recipes and not one of them failed to surprise and delight everyone. Her recipes and instructions reinvigorated my cooking and baking, because she makes it easy and uses fresh spices and whole foods. I watched her video on Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie Stuffed Soft Pretzels. The recipe was easy enough to read, but I needed to see the process in order to feel confident on how to make it. That is the strength of the video—it models the steps clearly and the music made it feel fun and easy. The weakness is that it gives the feeling that this will be a quick thing to make, because the video is only about 1 min long, but in reality it takes a lot longer to make. You also have to have the recipe separate from the video, which is an added step. I still would highly recommend not only Half-Baked Harvest’s videos, but all of her media and even the couple of cookbooks she has produced.

The other personal video I chose was Yoga with Adrienne. Adrienne Mishler is a yoga instructor that I’ve followed and learned yoga from. She makes yoga accessible for any one at any stage at any level of spirituality-talk-comfort-level, and she and her dog, Benji, make you feel right at home. I found her videos about four years ago when I was looking for some way to exercise that wasn’t so hard on my knees but would help my running game. I watched (and participated in) “Yoga in Hope Yoga Practice” today, and it did not disappoint. The strengths of this video are the options she gives for different stretches—there are usually 2-3 different ways to get the same benefit from a stretch without hurting—that she gives lots of affirmation and reminders to give yourself grace throughout, that she laughs at herself, and that she teaches good practices for how to not strain muscles and breathe correctly. The videos vary in length and there are so many that I can always find one that I can fit in each day. Probably the only weakness is that sometimes she has a tendency to talk as you are trying to do a pose for longer than you’d like.

Two instructional videos I watched that are relevant to my content areas are hosted by ISKME and Darin Nakakihara. ISKME is a non-profit education organization that provides research and training for educators especially in the field of Open Ed Resources. I found this video series a couple of months ago when I started another class covering OER. I watched the “Yilmaz Yorak: ISKME’s Teaching Practice Network and Collaboration” video. Yorak, an English teacher, shared his take-aways from a ISKME-directed collaboration session with two other educators, one from a Science field and one from a Math field. He told how much this collaboration across content areas helped develop a better and more integrated approach. The strength of this video was the first-person storytelling approach, which is very powerful and personal. The weakness would be the dead air or lack of music to move the video and keep the viewer engaged. Adding that could really have added to the power of the message. I would still recommend this video and especially the series of videos of ISKME offers as they are very practical for educators.

The last video I watched was “Top 5 Tech Tips For Teachers” by Darin Nakaihara, a K-12 teacher. I found this video series when I was looking for help in creating audio/video a year ago when we suddenly moved to remote learning. It was a lifesaver! This particular video covered Darin’s top 5 Chrome extensions that make a teacher’s life easier. The strengths of this video are the visual steps he walked through using his own computer screen while explaining verbally, the actual tips--which covered extensions that give the ability to screen-capture an entire webpage rather than just the screen and remove potentially distracting YouTube and website content for student viewing, and more-- and his friendly manner. It was hard to find a weakness—perhaps he could have added closed captioning for ADA.

What are your favorite instructional videos? What about them stands out to you?