Creating Closed Captioning for Your YouTube Videos

For the last two years, I have been invited to Ms. McElwain’s American Sign Language classes to help them with a video project that they do with fairy tales. Why I particularly enjoy this project is due to what Ms. McElwain asks her students to do that is not done in any other class at Bedford High School. You might be thinking, well that is obvious…she is asking students to sign. Yes, but she also requires her students to learn how to add closed captioning in their videos. Not everyone knows American Sign Language, so by including this with their videos, others can learn a bit of the language. Me personally, I would have liked to have had the opportunity to learn this language. Thanks to Ms. McElwain, I know how to sign tech teacher.

Steps for Creating Closed Captioning

Students first figure out what they are going to sign before they even film
Students then record themselves signing on their Chromebook using Screencastify (click HERE for previous blog post on how to use this tool)
Students send their video to their School YouTube channel to work on closed captioning (click HERE for instructions on how to use closed captioning or see below)
Depending on your school environment, students should check their ‘sharing permission’ of their YouTube video. (either have them select Unlisted or Public)
Students share their video with their teacher through Google Classroom

Watching Any YouTube Video
Whenever you watch a YouTube video, you can activate Closed Captioning on the Video by selecting the CC box at the bottom right of the YouTube video. Closed Captioning will then appear.

*NOTE: For the video in the image below, I did not actually work on the Closed Captioning even though it was a video that I screencasted. YouTube is making its best guess on what is being stated. Thus, there might be some errors in what is being stated verbally versus being shown through text.