Creating a YouTube channel to equip parents and teachers of students who are deaf

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.