If you're an innovative educator, by now, you have probably tried Google Hangouts which let you conduct a video conference with up to ten people / locations FOR FREE! This by itself has terrific potential for teaching and learning tool.

I explained here ways the following ideas could be put to use in the classroom:
1)  Take a class without having to be in the same place.
2)  Invite an audience to a performance.
3)  Invite others to perform/discuss with you.

What you may yet to have tried is live streaming your Hangout and capturing it via YouTube. This is known as Google Hangouts On Air which takes something  that was already awesome, and makes it even better.

You can see what it is here:

You can find out how to set it up here. 

You can discover five great ways to use it for education below.

1) Online classes / webinars
Forget that expensive software. Google Hangouts are now the perfect tool for online professional development and webinars. Now you can live stream that online class and have up to ten participants total. So you can have several expert guests joining the class and still have several spaces for participants to jump in for questions, feedback, etc. Since only ten participants can chat at a time in a Hangout, for a large class use a back channel chat like Twitter with selected hashtag, Today’s Meet.  Remember to assign a back channel monitor that among other things can invite interested participants who have something to contribute to join the Hangout live.

2)    Professional development
The first thing that comes to my mind is that professional development can be live streamed so for instance even if educators can’t be at a professional development in person, they can watch it from their homes and up to ten can even participate.  These sessions are then recorded and available on YouTube for viewing anytime / anywhere.  What’s also great is that YouTube now has simple editing tools, so you can quickly and easily add captions, headlines, cut video etc.

3)    The home – school connection
In the 21st century where many students come from either single-parent working families or those where both parents must work, coming to school is difficult.  Live streaming lets school come to the parent either live or later via recording. Schools can share morning announcements, assemblies, celebrations and more.  Teachers can student presentations and invite parents to actually join the hangout at the time their child will be presenting. It is there later for parents to share with friends and families to brag far and wide.  Views and comments can also be exciting and motivating for students. The account holder has comment moderation privileges, if there are worries about possible inappropriate comments.

4) Meetings
Sometimes not all participants can physically attend a meeting, but with live streaming they can watch from where they are live, or view later.

5) Poetry Slam
It is not unusual for schools to collaborate with other schools for poetry slams. In the past this was often done via something like Skype.  With Google Hangouts On Air, you can have multiple classes collaborating and on the day of the actual slam, the event can be live streamed and the school community invited to watch. For those who can’t watch live, they can watch the recording.

1. Sign up to Reddit

If you don’t create an account, you can’t use Reddit. So, first of all sign up to Reddit and create an account.


2. Share contents from other websites

I know you are surprised. You are expecting some interesting or valuable tips in second point of my article like sharing your own contents and getting traffic. But, no, it’s the one of the most important or valuable steps. Without it your all work is going to be spoiled. It is one of the reasons for which I failed. After creating your account, for first few days forget about your own blog when you use Reddit. Submit interesting topics from other websites and try to get more and more up-votes and build Karma. Otherwise your account can get banned. You will not get up-votes or karma either. Submit your own links when your Karma is around 150. After you have started submitting your links, I suggest you not to submit links only from your own blog. Reddit rules say to submit post from other sites.


3. Read the rules of sub-reddits and avoid spamming

Many users submit their links without knowing about the rules of sub-reddit. Reddit is highly concern about spamming. It has a spam filter which automatically filters out spam. But, don’t worry. You can prevent it. Before submitting, read the rules of sub-reddits where you want to submit your link because different sub-reddits have different rules. Also be sure that your link was submitted before by you or someone else or not. After submitting, to check whether your link is alive or not, click the “New” tab of that sub-reddit where you have submitted your link. If it is not there, it means, your link is caught by spam filters.


4. Get more up-votes and make front page of Reddit

To get huge traffic you need more up-votes. It helps to get your link on the front page of Reddit which is the number one goal of Reddit. For that you need to get first 10 up-votes for your link as quick as possible and it will rise to the top in that sub-reddit. Reddit will favor you more if you manage 100 up-votes in 1 hour. But, if it takes 10 hours, it won’t be effective. Reddit ranks newer stories higher than older stories. So, try to submit newer stories. If your link gets the highest number of up-votes in that sub-reddit, it will rise to the front page. Another thing is the first 10 up-votes have the same power as the next 100 up-votes which have the same power as the next 1,000. But, all these equation will not work if you get significant amount down-votes which will also affect the rank of your link. For example, getting 120 up-votes and 10 down-votes is better than getting 1000 up-votes and 900 down-votes.


But, how will you get more up-votes and more traffic, here is the ways-


a. Find interesting contents and submit it

Like I said before, find and share contents from other popular sites. If you submit your own links only, people won’t like you and think you a spammer. So, there is high chance that you would get down-votes.  More down-votes means your account is more in trouble. Keep in mind that Reddit is created for sharing valuable information with people and which is going to help them. What I do is if I submit 5 links, 1 is from my own site. But what types of posts should you submit? Think that you are sharing information or interesting things (photos/videos) with people. Your aim is to make them happy. Share content that is funny, humorous or interesting. The best types may be videos, drawings or interviews. You can search google for this. You can share latest science/technology news from popular sites.


b. Give an interesting title to your link

Reddit don’t allow you to put link summary like other social bookmarking sites. You can only give a title to your link. So, try to give a clear idea about your post. Also make the title attractive or surprising. For an example, you are sharing a link about facebook’s new feature hashtag. Your title should not be “Facebook’s new feature hashtag”. But, it can be “Facebook turns heat on twitter with hashtag”


c. Submit your link to a suitable sub-reddit

Before choosing a sub-reddit, you have to think about 2 matters. One is name of the sub-reddit and number of subscribers of the sub-reddit. Try to be more specific when you choose a sub-reddit. Find sub-reddit that is the best fit for your post. Suppose you want to submit a link about “Benefits of using Google chrome”.  You should choose chrome subreddit for it, not technology/internet. Then see number of subscribers of that sub-reddit. Traffic depends on the number. If you can’t choose a perfect sub-reddit, it won’t be effective.


d. Time for submitting your link

If you submit your link when people are not active, you can not expect many up-votes. Study says that, the best time for submitting your link on most social networks is before 5pm EST. Same timing is helpful for Reddit.


e. Let people know you are active

Try to give valuable and attractive comments to posts which have got high number of up-votes. It will help you to drive traffic to your submitted links. It’s simple. If they love your comments, they can be curious about your posts and they can go to your links and give it an up-vote. Thus they will know about you and may follow you and give you up-vote. But, don’t do it excessively. Do it sometimes.


5. Don’t be crazy to submit all-time

It is another important thing. Other social bookmarking sites may allow you to submit a lot of links everyday. But, Reddit won’t allow you to do so. One link is enough for a day.




6. Don't be frustrated
It will take time to get good result. Your 1st 20 post may get less amount of up-votes. But, don't be frustrated for that. Try to find out why you have failed. Keep trying and you will get success.


7. Follow other Reddit users

It won’t give you up-votes or traffic, but it is very helpful. What you have to do is watch what other users are doing. Specially follow users whose links are on front page. Try to understand why they have got so many up-votes or what types of posts get more up-votes. Find out what’s the difference between your title and their titles. See how they comments on a post. This will give you more knowledge and you can understand what to do next.


Finally, I want to say that, though Reddit has strict rules, you can drive huge traffic to your blog by using it appropriately. Even it can make you happier than other social networking sites.