Learn English with Huito’s Tutorials

Education Cafe invites you to rediscover the nuggets of the previous Forum of Innovative Teachers. What if you were there for FEI12?

Did you try the flipped classroom in college? And courses to look at independently to get back up to speed? Huitorel, an English teacher at Jean Monnet de Bruns College, brings you this and more: He launched his channel on YouTube.

How did you come up with this idea?

A year and a half ago, following another parent-teacher conference, I was unable to respond to the concerns of parents of students who were suspended (My son has no basic English, what do I do? What do I do? Get him back up to speed?) I decided to react. The idea of ​​creating video capsules quickly caught on. Following the success of the previous year’s “Cup Song” clip I produced with my 105 3rd graders.

I learned about the power of the YouTube platform and its sharing and accessibility capabilities. After the technical aspects (shooting location, shooting equipment, lighting, green background) were settled, I wrote and produced 3 pilot episodes and launched the channel on March 28, 2014.

Have you taken any special training?

It’s a very lonely job as I write, direct and broadcast my videos. I tried this alone and very quickly, I felt that this approach was interesting to my students. The project was welcomed by the school principal. I don’t need any financial or technical support. Self-taught, I tackled technical problems by searching the web for solutions.

There’s a lot of French in your videos, and the music is a bit aggressive. Why this choice?

Dropout students often dread “all-English” lessons, and speaking to them in French is a simple way to bring them back to English. The same goes for music, which “embellishes” presentations.

Do your students come to watch your tutorials? Do you have an audience outside of your classes?

The result of this project, which is only in its early stages, has exceeded my expectations. In the months since, Huito’s exercises have gone beyond the simple structure of my classes. The channel has more than 4,000 subscribers and the videos have been viewed more than 200,000 times in many countries around the world.

It is very difficult to quantify the results: it is clear that my students are grateful for the work done, their confidence and motivation have only increased, and the videos have greatly helped them to progress and return to English. They kept only the notebooks of the previous years to hope that they could overcome their difficulties.

Capsules are very useful because they allow me to redirect a student directly to a video when the need arises. It is a bank of adapted and almost instant resources. The resource potential for the flipped classroom is also significant.

I’ve also received a lot of feedback from parents who are happy to see their child connect to a separate channel, giving them access to both original and adapted content. They are amazed at their child’s growing motivation (some parents even admit that they watch the videos because they understand that they are learning things!)

Then, an unexpected aspect of the program, I noticed that a large number of Internet users were watching Huito’s tutorials. If we do a quick calculation, 4000 subscribers teach 160 classes to 25 students at a time!

Finally, I had the opportunity to broadcast my project through several websites and media (TV and newspapers) dedicated to education, which helped to make it known. Many primary and secondary teachers have been sending me messages saying they are using my videos in their classes or directing their students to them, which makes me so happy!

Did you encounter any obstacles?

The main obstacle is that making the capsules takes a long time: for a 10-minute capsule, it sometimes takes ten hours of work. (between start of writing and delivery). So finding time to create content in addition to my regular classes was a hurdle. But this project, although it is primarily intended to help my students, I also think it can help many students in France. I am a strong advocate of free and open education, and I find the Internet an endless source of learning. Coming to this forum is my way of contributing to better access to learning modern languages ​​and therefore, helping more young people.

Comments collected by Christine Raymond

Huito’s Exercises

Cup song

Cup song on