In 2012, at a teaching conference in Glasgow, eyebrows were raised when an English teacher piped up with what was, to many in the room, a surprising insight from watching students in his classroom. YouTube, said the teacher from Perth, was the most popular search engine among his students - and, he insisted, among young people generally.

They did not use Google when trying to understand a subject or get more information on it, he explained, because they preferred instructional videos to text-based explanations. This, said the teacher, was the whole new world that pupils were inhabiting and that educators were going to have to get used to: “They want to see, they don’t want to read.”

The reaction was cynical and dismissive from many quarters. But eight years later, YouTube - and online video learning in general - is suddenly one of the main ways that millions of students will be taught, owing to the closure of schools for the vast majority of pupils.

So who is making these ready-made tutorial videos?

Well, the answer to that is: teachers - or rather, at least a large proportion of the most popular videos are being made by teachers. Whether it’s Mr Woo sharing maths lessons on his ‘WooTube’ channel (bit.ly/MrWooMaths) or Mr Bruff’s “spoilery” and accessible analysis of English texts (bit.ly/MrBruffEnglish), many of the videos aimed at school-age students have a teacher in front of the camera.

And YouTube is trying to encourage more teacher-generated content: in a 10 January article, Tes explored “the rise of the EduTuber” - as YouTube has dubbed education vloggers - before and after a YouTube announcement late in 2018 that it would provide $20 million (£15.3 million) “to support creators who make some of the best learning content” on the platform.

But how many Scottish teachers are ready to become EduTuber superstars now that schools are relying on them even more and YouTube is ready to help them reach more people? How many will even be willing to record a video for their students alone?

It was startling to look online (before the coronavirus) and have your suspicions confirmed that there were barely any teachers posting online videos regularly - with one exception. A trawl through Google finds only education vloggers from outside Scotland. On The Social - the BBC’s hugely successful platform in Scotland for thought-provoking short videos by an array of young voices - there is only one schoolteacher out of more than 200 contributors: Adam Black, who has contributed a single video.

The exception to all this is Edinburgh primary teacher Blair Minchin, who has carved out a name for himself through short videos that are crammed with advice and quirky ideas for other teachers, which he shares on Twitter and Instagram.

With his brio, self-deprecating humour and an ability to squeeze a succession of snappy tips into a short space of time, Minchin’s videos have generated a lot of interest in Scotland and far beyond. Recent vlogs have been typically eclectic, covering everything from making silent movies as a way of demystifying maths, using circus skills to explain data, or launching giant dice into the classroom to encourage children to express themselves.

Finding an audience

Why did Minchin decide to become a vlogger? Having enjoyed performing from a young age, he laughs that his family would say it’s because he “loves the fame”. But you can’t miss the fact that he is a confident character with an expressive, sometimes archly humorous, form of delivery - there is clearly some truth that he is a performer in search of a wider audience.

He’s been a teacher for five years following a short stint in the legal profession, and set out to make videos very different to those of the 1970s and 1980s, which featured an ageing professor with milk-bottle glasses and a kipper tie monotonously reciting a lecture as an impassive camera stared him down.

Instead, Minchin opts for fast cuts, jarring angles and wry commentary - it’s more Quentin Tarantino than Open University and it’s a style that demands a certain level of ebullience and wit.

One of his most recent videos - he tries to make a new one each week - is essentially a skit on the clichés and platitudes of footballers’ post-match interviews, where he glugs on a water bottle and gives “credit to the backroom staff”. That sort of chutzpah is typical in his videos, but it’s not something that every teacher can call on.

So is he unique in simply having a range of attributes that make vlogging possible? He believes not.

The biggest factor, he believes, is quite simple: “Time, I guess, is a massive one. I’m very lucky: my family’s fit and healthy at the moment, I don’t have any children. So I do have time to do it and I feel that, while I’m in this position, I’ll give it my all.”

But there’s more to it - even with time, the thought of throwing yourself open to public viewing is not for everyone.

“Putting your face behind something is quite scary,” Minchin admits. I was shoved up on the stage from age 5 [but] people are sometimes a wee bit embarrassed by their own voice, and your own quirks and that - I guess I’ve just got used to mine.”

An extremely supportive headteacher and local authority - “the support from senior management has been amazing” - are also essential in giving Minchin the confidence and freedom to be creative with his vlogging. What helps is that his videos largely focus on creativity and Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths), which are two priorities at his school, so although he often takes an offbeat and unexpected approach, it still fits in with what colleagues are doing.

And Minchin has one more key ingredient: a thick skin. For many teachers, dealing with the fallout of posts is a hassle they just don’t need. Minchin, though, downplays the blowback he has suffered at times, although he does admit that he has had “my fair share of detractors”.

In February, he admitted on Twitter that he was feeling “a little lost” on the social media platform, after being called a “weirdo” for saying that teachers should advocate care and love, and described as “evil” for suggesting that schools should think twice before printing in colour.

Shake it off

He is largely undeterred, however, and not slow to voice his opinions on things he feels strongly about. One video, in which he recites a poem voicing his concerns about educators who advocate “zero tolerance” approaches to behaviour, went viral in 2019, as did a Twitter thread in March this year, where he showed how insidious forms of sexism wormed their way into pupils’ minds, from the hierarchy in a pack of cards to workplace gender stereotypes thrown up by Google Images.

“I don’t mind putting my head above the parapet,” says Minchin, who believes that his willingness to do just that has helped forge connections with pupils’ families.

After expressing his concerns online about punitive approaches to behaviour, some parents came to see him and shared “an array of comments” on the matter, “which was interesting because I didn’t actually think at that time that parents saw me [online].

“Some said, ‘That was really good, what you said’, but I had a couple who were asking a few questions about it.”

But he believes that “anything that gets parents talking to us”, whether they disagree with his views or not, is “fantastic”.

So is it the public nature of vlogging that deters teachers most? If so, the current requirement of teachers to teach remotely should be a ‘safe space’, because those videos should be seen only for the pupils for whom they are intended.

However, Jamie Thom - whose book, A Quiet Education, challenges “the myth that collaboration and noise should be at the heart of what happens in schools” - believes that even videos with a limited audience may be an issue: teachers, he says, remain more comfortable sharing their views in written form.

Adam Black, whose video for The Social was awarded the British Empire Medal in 2019 for raising awareness about stammering, agrees: he is not convinced about using the medium more generally.

“I think I’d much rather read an article about education, and then I can decide if I read it in depth or skip-read it, depending on my level of interest,” he says. “I guess with a vlog, you have to invest in watching the whole thing to get the general gist of it - perhaps teachers don’t have the patience for that at the end of the day.”

David Gilmour, a learning technologist who supports East Lothian schools in their use of ICT, believes there may be more practical and logistical reasons for teachers not embracing vlogging.

“Schools, by and large, don’t have their infrastructure set up for it,” he says, pointing to Glow, the digital network for Scottish schools: its use of Office 365 allows “some video capability” but only in an intranet style that restricts sharing of files. Also, school networks are “very heavily loaded and slow compared to home networks”. Uploading video in schools “is now a very slow process as the files can be very large”.

And using a more efficient personal mobile device may not be possible, says Gilmour. Some teachers will be required to use computers and tablets that are issued by the local authority, which may lead to security and safeguarding concerns if, for example, devices’ account details are visible and - a design feature of school systems - a teacher cannot log out.

There may also be barriers that are more psychological or even rooted in national character. A colleague once told me that, around 20 years ago, when teachers in Scotland were being told to collaborate more, to share their ideas and good practice in a way they were not accustomed to, there was a lot of disquiet. Even when she asked teachers to express their thoughts on something that would reflect well on them and their school, there was often anxiety about appearing to be self-congratulatory.

Fear of being a “tall poppy” or - to give it a more Scottish twist, the idea of “I kent your faither” - has often been cited as a peculiarly Scottish attribute: the direct opposite of the self-promoting, go-getter mentality that is embraced in, say, the US. It is the feeling that, even if you succeed in something, you should keep schtum about it for fear of looking too big for your boots, and of triggering recrimination, whether overt or passive-aggressive.

In 2006, for example, a front-page Tes Scotland story involved a young Scottish primary teacher who had won a prestigious award. But the piece was not so much about the award and what she had done to deserve it as the online abuse she had received from other teachers, who perceived she was daring to believe she was better than them.

Lack of confidence

The reluctance to promote one’s own work and achievements is still rooted in the Scottish mindset, believes Carol Craig, the author and researcher whose 2003 book, The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence, sparked much debate.

“I can imagine that many ordinary Scots would feel uncomfortable doing [vlogging],” she says. Teachers would be fearful of provoking responses of “Who do you think you are?” - not to mention their fear of repercussions from the people they worked for if they made a misstep.

“I hope that this is beginning to change but I still think there is a lot of waiting for permission,” she says.

That view is echoed by learning technology expert Ewan McIntosh, chief executive of global skills development company NoTosh and a former languages teacher in Scotland.

“Blogging was hard enough to encourage people to do - they thought they were blowing their own trumpet instead of helping the profession,” he says. “But at least you can think when you write and before you press ‘publish’. Video is hard to do well, needs a confidence that the 50 per cent of extroverts out there even find hard to muster, and is also harder for people to analyse, reflect on and lift from.”

There’s also the fact that being great at video does not necessarily make you a great teacher. “The superstar vloggers on Instagram aren’t necessarily the best trainers, but they’re confident and can inspire with their stories and attitude. It’s a skill. It’s their job. [But] it’s not the job of most people and it’s not something they’ve had a chance or desire to develop further.”

An interesting point about Minchin’s videos is that they are pitched at other teachers looking for ideas rather than his pupils: he is not so much teaching directly by online video as collaborating with other teachers.

So perhaps even Minchin will struggle to adapt to the new demand on teachers to present their lessons virtually (if that is the route their schools are taking). Certainly, it seems that schools should consider carefully before expecting every teacher to turn into an EduTuber.

But what does that English teacher who said at the conference back in 2012 that his colleagues had better get their head around video? The man in question is Neil Winton.

“I think it has immense potential but, like all disruptive technologies, video requires good modelling and training,” he says.

He suspects that the main reason for resistance is that “the vast majority of teachers are inclined to think they can’t handle the technology”, as well as “the age-old practice of teaching within a classroom with the door closed”.

That seems a key point: a huge change of mindset is required. For all the talking-up in recent times of things such as collaboration between teachers and interdisciplinary learning, teaching can still often feel like a solitary, even lonely, existence - and if you are used to that, suddenly sharing your thoughts and practice with the world may seem a daunting prospect.

Winton puts it like this: “Video teaching or vlogging is a case of removing the door, the walls, the whole barrier between what we do, and being judged on it - and we have enough insecurities, thanks to school inspectors, without adding self-imposed scrutiny from the world.”

Henry Hepburn is news editor at Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 3 April 2020 issue under the headline “One man and his vlog”