Creating a YouTube Channel to Equip Parents and Teachers of Students Who are Deaf

Abstract

Due to the social distancing requirements in response to the
2020 COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 students moved to online
education. Because of the limited online teaching resources
accessible to Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students, the authors
have developed a YouTube channel that focuses on providing
instructional videos that present different educational
activities in a way that can be easily accessed by DHH students,
their parents, and their teachers. Signed and captioned
instructional videos for parents and teachers to use with
DHH students were assigned as projects for two of the author’s
courses. By creating meaningful online content as a
part of coursework, teacher candidates gained the experience
of creating a practical product to be used for K-12 students
and teachers. The learning opportunities created by teacher
candidates includes online technology resources for teachers,
content-area activities for K-12 students, and fun activities
to help build parent-child communication skills. The authors
hope to continue to create educational online content that is
accessible to DHH students beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Full text

Jl. of Technology and Teacher Education (2020) 28(2), 453-461
Creating a YouTube Channel to Equip Parents and
Teachers of Students Who are Deaf
CHAD SMITH AND SARAH COLTON
Texas Woman’s University, USA
csmith17@twu.edu
scolton1@twu.edu
Due to the social distancing requirements in response to the
2020 COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 students moved to online
education. Because of the limited online teaching resources
accessible to Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students, the au-
thors have developed a YouTube channel that focuses on pro-
viding instructional videos that present different educational
activities in a way that can be easily accessed by DHH stu-
dents, their parents, and their teachers. Signed and captioned
instructional videos for parents and teachers to use with
DHH students were assigned as projects for two of the au-
thor’s courses. By creating meaningful online content as a
part of coursework, teacher candidates gained the experience
of creating a practical product to be used for K-12 students
and teachers. The learning opportunities created by teacher
candidates includes online technology resources for teachers,
content-area activities for K-12 students, and fun activities
to help build parent-child communication skills. The authors
hope to continue to create educational online content that is
accessible to DHH students beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
THEORY/LITERATURE REVIEW
Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students are a diverse group with wide-
ranging characteristics (Marschark & Knoors, 2012; Smith & Allman,

454 Smith and Colton
2019). Training pre-service teachers to work with DHH students and the
parents with whom they cannot communicate is especially challenging
(Marschark & Knoors, 2012; Smith & Allman, 2019) and requires ample
practical experience through experiential learning, or learning by doing (Bo-
hon, et al., 2017).
Despite the fact that many young pre-service teachers have grown up
surrounded by technology, many do not innately have the skills to effec-
tively apply it in a classroom environment (Albion, 2008; Cennamo, et al.,
2010; Kumar & Vigil, 2011). Teacher educators must find real-world oppor-
tunities to develop technology-based instructional experiences for teachers
to develop technology competencies. The need to train pre-service teachers
to use classroom technology applications became even more apparent when
in-service teachers who had not previously considered how to teach technol-
ogy applications were required to do so by recent COVID-19 mandates.
PROCESS
In response to COVID-19 mandates, open-access resources that could
be widely disseminated for parents and teachers of DHH students were
needed. The Texas Woman’s University Future Classroom Lab (TWUFCL)
(https://www.facebook.com/TWUFCL/) followed researcher recommenda-
tions advocating purposeful technology integration into teacher preparation
coursework (Margaryan et al., 2011; Smith & Allman, 2019) by creating
a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIU2rpviuGZ-
F4uB6l9Npd8Q) founded on pre-service teacher work products. Its goal
is to provide accessible learning opportunities to all students, parents, and
teachers, but especially those who are DHH.
The first author is a deaf education faculty member who coordinates
the TWUFCL. When stay-at-home mandates began, the university transi-
tioned to teaching online. Thus, his coursework became material that stu-
dents could create and submit online. With Kolb’s (1981) experiential learn-
ing theory in mind, he decided to investigate how creating future teacher
work products could be used with K-12 students left struggling to find ac-
cessible educational content (Bohon, et. al, 2017). Undergraduate (UG)
American Sign Language (ASL) students and graduate (G) deaf educa-
tion students created 5-10-minute signed activity videos for K-12 students
at home social distancing. The videos include science (https://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=U18FHd3hHXM), math (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Ad5PZOvsiY8&t=199s), and art (https://www.youtube.com/

YouTube Channel 455
watch?v=sOpdVzNQoaE) activities for parents, children, and teachers. Stu-
dents created their videos and shared them with the instructor as unlisted
videos using their university YouTube account. The teacher then download-
ed them, made necessary edits, and uploaded them to the TWUFCL You-
Tube channel. Presented in English or Spanish and ASL, the videos become
resources for teachers to use with students, and educational ideas to help
parents connect with their children while at home. Some video activities en-
courage parents and teachers to elevate activities by identifying opportuni-
ties for including creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collabo-
ration.
These activities benefitted pre-service teachers by allowing them to ap-
ply an experiential learning framework within practicum teaching scenarios
for an authentic student group during a time when no such interactions were
possible in-person. The project’s focus for UG students was delivering ma-
terial in ASL, and the focus for the G teacher candidates was developing
diverse, accessible learning opportunities for preK-12 students. Pre-service
teachers in both courses created teaching work products that were instruc-
tor-evaluated, edited, and posted on the YouTube channel. As a part of the
experiential learning, the instructor and teacher candidates reflected upon
the online resources created and found ways to improve them.
RESULTS
Witt and Orvis (2010) advocate meaningfully integrating learning tech-
nologies into deaf education curricula. Teacher candidates created online
video content, as a part of coursework, to be used to teach preK-12 DHH
students. By completing these video projects, teacher candidates created
practical products used for a specific purpose, as opposed to simply submit-
ting an assignment for a grade (Figure 1). The videos also allowed students
who would not have otherwise considered education to demonstrate their
ability to present educational content meaningfully (Figure 2).

456 Smith and Colton
Figure 1. Student YouTube video activity explanation.
Note: Each student video contains a signed explanation of the content and activity.
The videos are captioned to help parents understand the content and learn the sign.
Here the student fingerspells the word marker as part of the directions. The YouTube
video descriptions follow a consistent format for each video so users know what to
expect.
Figure 2. Student YouTube video activity demonstration.
Note: Each student video contains a demo of the activity. For consistency, all student
videos are uploaded to the TWUFCL YouTube channel instead of being uploaded to
the individual student’s channels.

YouTube Channel 457
Feedback from teacher candidates and deaf educators across the U.S.
has generally been positive. Student feedback includes 4 UG students who
want to continue creating videos even though they are no longer part of the
course, 3 of whom were initially apprehensive about creating videos. Addi-
tional comments from teachers in the Dallas-Ft Worth area include the suc-
cess of posting the videos in their Google Classrooms for students to use
and making topical requests for videos. One local teacher who enjoyed the
videos answered the call to teachers and has created videos to be posted on
the channel. The first author continues to use the feedback from those using
the YouTube channel to amend approaches for the channel’s development.
Not all videos created appear on the channel thus far. While work prod-
ucts might be examples of a student’s abilities, if they fail at directing a
learning activity appropriately (linguistically or methodologically), they are
not posted to the channel (Table 1).
Table 1
Video assignments versus videos appearing on YouTube Channel
Courses Number of
Assignments
Number of
Videos Used
Faculty Example
Videos
In-service Teacher
Example
ASL (UG) 30 16 2 1
Deaf Culture (G) 40 11 6 1
TO TAL 70 27 8 2
Currently, the channel has 48 subscribers, and YouTube’s channel ana-
lytics reveal that there have been 879 views within the past 28 days, with the
4 most-watched videos having at least 50 views each (Table 2). New stu-
dent-generated videos covering science, math, art, and technology content,
and technology tutorial videos for teachers, are added almost daily. There
are 9 playlists in which videos appear (Table 3).

458 Smith and Colton
Table 2
Most-watched videos
Video title Video
Length
Playlists Target audience Number of
Views
Backyard Plant Parts
https://youtu.be/
VzcYaS9--bs
10:19 • Activities for Teachers
to Use
• Activities for Parents &
Children
• Activities for Students
• Resources for Teachers
Elementary-Aged
Students
111
Drawing a 3D Hand
https://youtu.be/
x0jrWY9VJxg
4:52 • Activities for Teachers
to Use
• Activities for Parents &
Children
• Elementary-Age Activities
• Activities for Students
Older
Elementary-Aged
Students
96
TWU FCL YouTube
Welcome
https://youtu.be/
xScZ90aY_Po
1:51 • About Us All 70
Colorful Chemical
Reaction in Milk
https://youtu.be/
xx-AtXoHfXU
2:53 • Activities for Teachers
to Use
• Activities for Parents &
Children
• Activities for Students
Elementary/
Middle school
students
56
Table 3
Playlists and Number of Videos
Playlists Number of Videos
Activities for Parents & Children 32
Activities for Teachers to Use 26
Activities for Students 17
Elementary-aged Activities 14
Resources for Teachers 9
Deaf Awareness Activities for General Ed 3
Teachers Supporting Teachers 2
About Us 1
Secondary-aged Activities 0
Because the project’s focus for the university students is creating mean-
ingful video content for DHH students, their parents, and their teachers, not

YouTube Channel 459
learning how to use a specific video creation and editing software, the lead
author assists with captions and edits student videos to ensure consistency
and accessibility. Since part of ensuring accessibility includes captioning
videos in the language of the target audience, some videos are captioned in
Spanish and some in English.
IMPLICATIONS
Practicum experiences are an essential part of teacher preparation, con-
necting the theories of teaching to practice (Kennedy & Archambault, 2012;
La Paro et al., 2018; Scott et al., 2014). There is a growing need for practi-
cum experiences within the virtual classroom (Kennedy & Archambault,
2012). Despite increases in online K-12 education, Kennedy and Archam-
bault (2012) found only 1.3% of teacher preparation programs provide pre-
service teachers opportunities to participate in online field experiences. Pre-
service teachers must practice navigating online educational environments
in preparation to meet student needs (Kennedy & Archambault, 2012). By
creating K-12 student videos, pre-service teachers can participate in practi-
cum experiences not otherwise available.
Supporting research on the importance of knowing how and when to
use technology in teaching (Flanagan & Shoffner, 2013; Young, 2009), pre-
service teachers created meaningful learning opportunities to be replicated
at home by parents and K-12 students. By creating teaching products and
reflecting upon them with instructors, pre-service teachers learn to reflect
on their presentation approaches and evaluate strengths and weaknesses in
direct support of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (Kennedy-Clark et al.,
2018; Kolb, 1981). This project provided resources and support to be used
by DHH students in the current COVID-19 situation, and introduced a new
project format for teacher trainers to use providing pre-service teachers with
experience using technology as a teaching tool while creating work products
that the target audience can use immediately. While this endeavor specifi-
cally impacted deaf education teacher candidates, the approach can easily
be replicated by other teacher education programs, especially those topics
which parents may have limited general knowledge like foreign language,
science, art, and mathematics.
Teachers and teacher educators considering developing a YouTube
Channel for their coursework should 1) determine the purpose and intended
use of the channel and content; 2) identify the audience(s); 3) outline the
processes to get the videos online; and 4) evaluate areas of concern with the
process (Table 4).

460 Smith and Colton
Table 4
Suggested strategies for faculty implementation of a YouTube channel
Possible Area of Student
Difficulty
Faculty Solution(s)
Video quality Provide list of settings for creating & recording videos
Understanding the parameters Create example videos with and for the teacher candidates
and post them to the channel.
Overwhelming the students Determine which aspects of the video projects students
should focus on instead of learning all aspect of plan-
ning, creating, and editing videos, which might become
overwhelming.
FUTURE RESEARCH
The authors will continue to build the channel with pre-service teacher
work products as the nation slowly re-opens, modifying the content of the
videos to address the changing needs of the students, parents, and teachers
that use them. The authors’ continued research into this project will address
three areas: 1) evaluating the impact of creating K-12 teaching opportunities
for pre-service teachers within teacher education; 2) determining whether
the K-12 teaching opportunities impact pre-service teacher motivation; and
3) analyzing whether creating practical resources for K-12 student popula-
tions helps pre-service teachers better understand providing instruction to
students.
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