Description
YouTube is an online video sharing and social media platform owned by Google. It is a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch, create and upload your own videos to share with others. You can also use it to curate other people’s videos to share them with Newcomers. Videos can be embedded in your website, and you can create YouTube playlists of your own or other people’s videos to share.
Current known uses in the sector
- Webinar recordings
- Introductions to programs and services
- Livestream, via YouTube itself or through Zoom and other livestream/video conferencing tools
- Orientation, explanation, and how-to videos
- Simple “talking head” videos where you share information or provide orientation
- YouTube can be used in Citizenship Preparation, Community Connections, Employment-related, Information and Orientation, Library Settlement Partnership, Settlement Workers in Schools as a tool to share a variety of types of videos with Newcomers, created by you and others.
Video overview
Pricing
YouTube is free to use, upload, and share videos and playlists.
There is no login required to view videos. However, if you want to upload videos, create a YouTube channel, and create your own Playlists and take advantage of YouTube’s advanced features, you should create an account with Google and login. YouTube also offers a paid service (YouTubeRed), which allows you to watch videos and listen to music without advertisements. YouTube also has a Nonprofit program with additional benefits.
Ease of use & Accessibility
YouTube is a simple and well-designed website. The help page (see YouTube Help Center) allows users to find an answer to their questions.
YouTube supports a pop-out button, expand/shrink button, and screen reader, TalkBack, full page zoom, high contrast settings, and chrome accessibility extensions to increase accessibility.
Mobile friendly
YouTube is mobile friendly via its smartphone app or mobile web browsers on smartphones.
Privacy/security features (including data security and message encryption)
Videos can be set to:
- Public, which means the video shows up on YouTube, in YouTube and other web searches and can be viewed by anyone
- Unlisted, which means that the video won’t show up in YouTube searches and someone needs the direct video link in order to view the video. These videos can still be shared and embedded on websites.
- Private, which means that the video is not public or shareable in public. Only people the video is shared with can view the video.
If you do not want to allow a video to be embedded by others onto other websites you can restrict video embedding.
In order to upload videos and create playlists you must create an account on YouTube. You can sign in YouTube with your Google account. Google services ask for your personal information (e.g., name, phone, birthday, age, location,and username) and want you to make your profile publicly visible. Google uses cookies to identify your browser and device and to present appropriate ads, remember search preferences, and offer options based on user data. In addition, they also use people’s information to maintain and develop Google services, and protect both users and Google from malware and spam. See Google Privacy Policy.
Make sure you do not use a personal Google/YouTube account. Your organization should have an account, or you should create a separate account that is specific and only for work-related videos.
Multilingual capabilities
Videos can be created, shared, and viewed in any language. YouTube also allows you to create and add captions in any language to include with your videos. YouTube also uses speech recognition technology to automatically create captions, including translations, for your videos. These are generally not completely accurate and should be reviewed before encouraging Newcomers to view the translated captions.
Additional resources