Tag Archives: video

Digital Portfolios 2.0 – Photo/video phone skills

A key element of adding items to a student’s digital portfolio is adding photos and videos – these are most often captured on a student’s mobile phone camera roll. At this point though, most students become stumped at how to get this media into their Google Site. (This becomes ANOTHER evidence that students need more practice with their digital skills.)

The best method is via the Google Drive app on the student’s phone. (Video coming soon). 

If you often upload media (photos and/or video) to Google Drive or other platforms, you can save yourself lots of time – and storage space on your phone – by reducing the file size of your photos and videos as you capture them. 

Watch the video for some quick tips on how to do this with both photos and video.

And, I’m pleased to add that I had to learn some new skills this week for this video and some others that I made for my Clean-up Blitz. Previously, whenever I’ve included videos from my phone, they have been just screen recordings with no commentary. I’ve just learned how to record my phone screen with a voice-over – something I should have learned a while ago. It involved Quick Time on my Mac – an app that I seldom use.

Tech in 20 Mini: edpuzzle

Yet another “Tech Tip in 20” mini-PD offered in #PRSD8 during COVID19. Here the original Google Meet-delivered lesson is converted into a click-able format for you to use with your own staff or students.

Background Info:

Although edpuzzle existed long before COVID, in many ways it is the ultimate distance learning tool. Edpuzzle puts accountability into each video that you show or assign to students. When we are assigning lessons asynchronously, we often rely on video content to help ‘teach’ the students. Yet we have all experienced students who “don’t know what to do” in a lesson, precisely because they have not bothered to watch the video that we so carefully chose or even created ourself via screencast!

Edpuzzle lets you add self-marking multiple choice questions, short answer questions, teacher info and even voice notes at points in the video that you choose – and shows you how much of the video a student watched. You can choose videos with questions already embedded from edpuzzle’s vast video library, choose a video from another source like YouTube or Vimeo, or upload videos from your own collection, including all of those screencasts you made during COVID.

Hands-on Mini-Lesson. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Start by watching this quick video overview to edpuzzle.

Step 2: If you have already created an account, do NOT log in yet! Instead, click here to try a sample edpuzzle Video. Be sure to choose “student”. This sample gives an overview of creating items with edpuzzle. (Use the link above, or add it to your own edpuzzle account and send the link so that you can show results in your teacher dashboard.)

Step 3 : If there is time (and you have launched the Step 2 video from your own account), show teachers what the the results look like in your teacher dashboard. The self-marking capability and dashboard evidence is one of edpuzzle’s biggest draws.

Step 4: Now as a teacher, create your own account or log in to an existing account.

Step 5: Once teachers are logged in, have them find a video and play with adding some questions or editing a video from the vast edpuzzle library. Starting with someone else’s edpuzzle is an easy way to start.

Step 6: If teachers need a challenge, have them add a video stored on their device, Google Drive/One Drive or a favourite YouTube video to add questions from scratch.

Step 7: If there is time, one last thing to consider is adding the edpuzzle chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store. This extension puts an edpuzzle right below each video that you play in YouTube. Just click that edpuzzle button and it takes you directly to edpuzzle to start adding your own questions to that video.

Get the lesson mini-slide deck here: bit.ly/tech20_2_06

More Personal PD:

Click here to check out the whole Tech Tips in 20 Series.

Padlet For Student Online Gallery Walk

Extend learning and expand student to student connection by providing an avenue for students to share and view each others’ work and ideas online. Padlet provides the ultimate “gallery walk” of student content DURING a Google Meet or Zoom class.

Simply share the Padlet link in the chat and give students a few minutes to upload previously created work or quickly use one of the multiple Padlet creation tools. Note that the “Film” and “Voice” recorder work from within Padlet – no need to create elsewhere and upload.

The video over-view below shows you how to customize and share your Padlet Wall, including how to customize the link to fit your topic. It also shows how to save a PDF version of student work from your Padlet so that you can delete the content and reuse your wall to stay within your free account limit.

Want to know more about Padlet? Check out these previous posts:

Padlet Premium Panic Put to Rest

Padlet Reinvents itself… again

Padlet for a District-wide Book Study

10 Tips for Video in the Virtual Class

As a Social Studies teacher, I have always sought out video to add interest and context to my classes. In my early career- before YouTube existed – using video took lots of forethought and planning. I do have to admit that I may have, very early in my career, even shown movie footage on one of those great big reel projectors – the kind that you had to plan for weeks in advance in order to have the movie reel delivered from a regional video warehouse!

Thank the Good Lord that using video in our modern classrooms is so much easier. And even though it is easier, there are many things that we can do to make the use of video as efficient and powerful as possible in our hybrid or online classes.

  1. Turn on your camera, even though you really don’t want to be on camera! If possible, elevate your device so your camera is slightly above eye level; look at it! Talk to your students! They need the connection! This holds true for video recordings as well as Zoom calls.
  2.  Keep it short.  Opt for more shorter videos rather than one long video. Students are more likely to watch two 5-minute videos than a 10-minute video.
  3. If your original video is longer, set your video to start and end at exactly the content that students need to see. Watch the video below to learn how to:
    1. set the start time in YouTube
    2. set the start and end time in Google Slides

4. Banish Ads! If you insert your video into a Form (Google or Microsoft), Slides/PowerPoint or Google Classroom/Microsoft One Note the video plays from within the platform, with no ads or distracting “Watch Now” video side bar.

5. Use Video in Google Forms quiz feedback to “Re-Teach”. If students choose the wrong answer in a quiz, they can watch the video and perhaps try the quiz again.

6. Use a screen recording software like Screencastify, Flipgrid, or Loom to record the content part of your lesson. This is good pedagogy whether you are online, in-person or a blended situation.

  • students can watch and re-watch if they need extra help
  • you can reuse these videos or parts of videos in subsequent semesters or years
  • you can add quiz questions right into your own content videos using a tool like EdPuzzle (try it out in this post) or Playposit. (See #10 below).

7. Curate collections with YouTube Playlists. There are so many reasons that you should start doing this:

  • Collect video libraries – helps to provide students with choice or additional learning
  • Shareable – post a playlist anywhere you can post a link
  • Can be collaborative – create playlists with your co-teachers
  • One link to share; the link stays the same, but your collection can grow/change
  • Set to Public, Unlisted, or Private

8. End your video by sending students to a task or a call to action. This will get them in the habit of watching to the end! Some ideas might include:

9. Create short visual, video instructions with animated GIFs. A .gif file can be most places that an image file can. A “looping” GIF is a great way to provide quick “How To” instructions. GIFs can be created from short videos or still images using several different platforms including Screencastify.com or giphy.com – click here for more ideas.

10. Increase accountability with edpuzzle.com. Insert comprehension or critical thinking questions right INTO your video. Here are more reasons to use Edpuzzle:

  • you can use almost any video – from YouTube, Vimeo, your own creation
  • Edpuzzle has a vast library of videos that already have questions inserted from sources such as Khan Academy, National Geographic or Crash Course
  • take an existing Edpuzzle video and edit the questions to suit your class
  • Edpuzzle marks the video questions and provides great data on their student dashboard
  • Learn more about Edpuzzle by trying out Edpuzzle
  • Need an edpuzzle account? Click here!

Alternatives to Screencastify Premium

Does this sound familiar? You got hooked on Screencastify’s Premium version during “At Home Learning” in the spring:

  • You recorded the “teaching” segments of your lessons,
  • You posted lessons straight to Google Classroom or to YouTube
  • You created tutorials on how to do online tasks – for students and for parents!
  • You created weekly video overviews so that your students could see YOU

And now that you’ve gotten so proficient at screen-recording, you can hardly imagine teaching without it – whether you are in-person or online. You are still using it when you can, but sometimes the 5-minute limit is just too short, and you miss the editing tools, such as being able to “splice” out that minute of dead time in the middle of your recording while you were waiting for a website to load.

But…your school district just doesn’t have the budget for a district account, and your principal doesn’t either. Some of your colleagues have gone ahead and purchased Screencastify Premium using their “Education Discount” feature, but things are tight right now and you are looking for a free alternative.

Here are some good options:

1. Flipgrid

Flipgrid is totally free and has added SO MANY new features in 2020 – one -of those was a screen-recording feature. While Flipgrid still has a time limit, at 10 minutes, that should be lots of time for creating teaching videos. (Most experts suggest that your content is more likely to be viewed if you have three, short 4 or 5-minute videos than if you have 1 long 15-minute video.) And here are more reasons why Flipgrid’s screencasting is a great option:

  • like Screencastify, you can stop and pause your recording
  • you can refine your video by trimming the ends off of each paused segment
  • you can add other videos recorded outside of Flipgrid, and even put them in the middle of your video – as long as your total time doesn’t exceed 10 mintues
  • you can easily create title screens – made even more fabulous with the recent new font and border packages released by Flipgrid
  • you can add stickers from the Flipgrid library, or upload your own images which act as stickers
  • you can use the regular Flipgrid recording with the whiteboard feature plus pens and typing and stickers to fully create and narrate explainer videos
  • or you can try those explainer videos with the new split-screen slider feature that allows your face to be in a portion of the video and your content to be in the rest of the screen
  • (Note that you can record regular Flipgrid videos on any device, but that the screen-recording option is NOT available on mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets)
  • Click here for more info on screenrecording with Flipgrid

2. Loom

Basic Loom, like Screencastify has a 5 minute limit, but Loom offers a free Education Account upgrade if you can prove that you are a teacher. This is a fairly easy process and will bump your recording time up to 45 minutes. Loom is an extension and so the initial recording process is very similar to Screencastify.

Once you hit stop, however, the options are quite different. You basically have two sharing options in Loom:

  • One way is to send or post the video link for your viewers. The bonus to this is that Loom has a built-in engagement counter that counts the number of views your video gets.
  • The other option is to download the video as an .mp4 file. It saves to your computer, and from there you can choose to take the extra step to send it to YouTube or Google Classroom, or any of the other places that you can send it to automatically with Screencastify.

Loom does have some unique features that I enjoy using:

  • the ability to create folders for better video organization
  • viewers accessing from the video link can add a few Emoji reactions to your video
  • in the Educator version, you can add a password to protect your video

3. We Video

WeVideo.com is the answer to student video creation on Chromebooks. WeVideo does have a screen-recording option however it is only available in the Premium Version of WeVideo. If you have the Premium version, this is a great screen-recording option, because after you have created your screen recording you have the full library of WeVideo’s video editing suite to customize your recording.

If you are from my school district and you are reading this, I have 4 “almost a year” Premium Account subscriptions to share. Email me! First come, first luck!

4. Screencast-O-matic

Screencast-O-matic was my first screen-casting love! It is where I started screencasting almost 10 years ago. It works a bit differently than the other systems as you have to install it on a laptop or desktop, but they have come up with an extension that runs on Chromebooks.

  • save to Google Drive, or share to Youtube or Google Classroom
  • 15 minute limit on the free plan
  • on a desk-top device you can zoom-in while recording
  • at $1.65 USD per month/ for the Deluxe Plan, there is an incredible range of upgrade tools; if you were going to pay for a screen-casting product, Screencast-O-matic is the biggest bang for your buck. Their upgrade is now much less costly than Screencastify’s (which has increased since COVID) and offers way more in-recording and editing tools than Screencastify.

Tech Tip: Set video start time in YouTube and Google Slides

Have you even spent time before class queuing up your YouTube video to skip over all of the content at the beginning that you don’t need?

Here is a quick video that shows:

  1. One method of setting your video start time right from within YouTube when you go to get the link; this also works with an embed code
  2. A method of setting a specific start time (and even an end time if you desire) when you insert a YouTube video into a Google Slides presentation.