From The Archives: Creating Effective Instructional Videos For The Classroom - E067

This week, we are discussing the why and how of creating effective instructional videos for your classroom. We'll share some considerations for creating videos, as well as tools you might want to use and tips and tricks to help you along the way.

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Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/67**

• Personal not professional!
• Why?
  • Learning in a mastery-based classroom
  • Create a clone of yourself
  • Frees up your time in the classroom to help your students
  • Access to videos anytime, anywhere
  • Helps with absences
• Considerations
  • Determine your learning goal BEFORE hitting record
  • Keep it targeted to a single learning goal
  • Use your curriculum docs to help with planning - Unit Planning Template
  • Use lots of purposeful visuals and minimize text on your slides
  • Add interactivity - questions, pause and connect -  Screencastify interactive questions in E064
  • Notes - differentiated for support levels needed (freehand, scaffolds, sentence starters, sentence frames, cloze, etc)
  • Provide guiding questions BEFORE watching the video
  • Retrieval practice for note taking
  • Make it personal, include your face and your personality
  • Keep recording time short, 6-9 minutes is ideal and less for elementary
  • Try out animations to control the flow of information
  • Include the big picture and progression
• Recording Process
  • Create your slides, docs, and plan it all out
  • Collaborate with others and create slide decks as a course team
  • Create an outline for your recording (use speaker notes in Slides)
  • Go for done, not perfect - mistakes are okay!
• EdTech Tools
  • Presentation Tools: Google Slides, Explain Everything, Prezi, Powerpoint, Keynote, Genial.ly
  • Recording Tools: Meet, Teams, Zoom, Screencastify, Screencast-o-matic, Loom, Flipgrid Shorts (use your screen as your virtual background), Explain Everything, OBS Studio, Quick Time Player
  • Learn the keyboard shortcuts!
  • iPad & Apple pencil - use an external microphone or headset with microphone
  • Above all else, use tools that meet your specific needs!

Transcript

Rachel: 0:25

Welcome to the Edge U Gals podcast. We are your co-host Rachel Johnson and

Katie: 0:31

Katie Atwell. We are here to bring you tips and tricks to help you integrate technology into your classroom.

Rachel: 0:40

In this episode, we are talking all about how to create effective instructional videos for your classroom. We're going to tell

Katie: 0:48

you why this is important, and then we're also going to share some tips as well as some tools that you can use when creating your

Rachel: 0:55

videos. Let's get started. This week, Katie and I are back and we're talking all about creating effective instructional videos today. So we're kind of going down this path of mastery based learning in our last couple of episodes. And so we thought that we ought to talk about creating instructional videos because really, I. That provides you with the structure and flexibility to be able to do mastery based grading in your classroom in the first place.

Katie: 1:31

Yeah. So we'll kind of go over the why, obviously we'll start with that, um, and then we'll talk about some best practices and whatnot. I, I do find that like this, It, it's really important to know how to make good videos because if your videos aren't good, then the mastery based isn't going to be good, if that makes sense. Like kids aren't going to engage if the videos are absolutely terrible and too overwhelming, or whatever the case may be. So I think that it's really important to, to make sure that you can do, you know, these short effective videos to help

Rachel: 2:04

make this possible. Yeah, and let's preface this a little bit so that, you know, we don't get people checking out right away at the beginning of our episode, but we are not talking about high quality, no professional level production videos. We are not talking about that. We are talking about creating those videos that you can use that are not going to take you a ton of time. And so we don't want you thinking that we want you to create these. You know, green screen effect, like all this like crazy stuff cuz that is not what we are talking about today. It's just how to kind of structure your slide decks if you're using slide decks for your videos and, and how to think about putting together and chunking out content. So it's. Easy and digestible for your students? Yes. Let's

Katie: 2:52

be clear, we don't need to be movie producers here. That's not what we're looking to do, but there's still a fine line as to like what to include, what not to include, how long, like I'm talking about you want students to watch. You don't want them to watch and then kind of stop watching and learning. You kind there. There is a happy medium in terms of how you create these

Rachel: 3:17

videos. So let's talk about why, why we wanna create instructional videos in the first place. So for me

Katie: 3:23

it's, well, the why is the learning so, In a mastery based classroom, the learning is going to be through these instructional videos for the most part. Um, I will have small group targeted instruction based on, you know, the needs of the students, and perhaps I need to present it in a different way, et cetera. But you know, for the most part, these students will be learning at their own pace and mastering these skills through the use of these. Short instructional videos

Rachel: 3:49

and to take that a little bit further, I sort of see this as I'm creating a clone of myself in, in my classroom so I can be helping other students while my students are learning from these videos. And so yeah, you can be in multiple places at once, which, you know, is, is so, so useful to be able to meet all the needs of your students. And not only that, your students have access to you anytime, anywhere as well. So like that is, So important because the students who, for example, are missing class for who knows what reasons, right? Like there's millions of reasons why students are not able to be in class, but then they're not being disadvantaged because they've missed that live lecture. You know, they can get caught up with a video. And so there's

Katie: 4:39

a lot of really great features of this and that being one of them, right? Like you're not worrying about scrambling and trying to reteach a lesson to somebody to catch them up while everybody else is moving forward. Because everything's already made. It's available. It's there. So now I think maybe is it worth going on and talking about some of the best practices or things to consider when creating

Rachel: 5:00

them? Yeah, I think it is because when, when you're starting out with videos, like the tool you pick is gonna be the tool that works for you. And we'll talk about some of those tools later on in this episode. But there are key sort of. Practices and things that you wanna think about as you're creating your instructional videos that are going to apply no matter what tool you pick. And I would

Katie: 5:24

say the first one, you as a teacher need to make sure you have determined your learning goal. Before you hit record, you wanna keep it specific and you wanna really hone in on that goal and try not to add

Rachel: 5:38

too much. It's almost like a different way of thinking about it because you are so used to maybe planning those bigger lessons where you hit on three or four different kind of key concepts. In a traditional class period. Instead, what you really need to do is look at those lessons and go, okay, how can I chunk this down into those smaller key concepts? And then make a video for each. So something that might traditionally take you, you know, a class period and a live lecture of, you know, I don't know how long, like 30 minutes. Might be chunked down into four separate videos. Each one focusing just on one tiny piece of that lecture. Yeah,

Katie: 6:20

exactly. So it, it's going back to that lesson that you want to deliver over a period of however long you would normally do it, and breaking it down into very small pieces. And then each of those pieces will be a separate video. And I think that's probably the first step because we always, as teachers, we're so used to like the teaching for a long period of time, you have to abandon that thought process. We're not doing that this time.

Rachel: 6:47

Yeah, for sure. I find it really helpful to go back to my curriculum documents. So I'll take a look at the curriculum documents and then I'll look at what are those key skills in each of my lessons. And I have a really nice kind of Google doc that I just throw them all into and go, okay, what is the goal? And it can only be one goal. Like, I don't wanna create a video for anything more than one specific objective. Agreed. And so I'll go through and list them all, and then that gives me kind of like my hit list of the videos I need to create then. And

Katie: 7:24

uh, Rachel's been working with me on my. English as an additional language and we actually started doing exactly that and it was so overwhelming at first to think, you know, how are these videos gonna come together? But she's right. Like we honestly went back to curriculum. You could very explicitly see like those skills that we need to target and how they progressed throughout the different courses. And it was kind of amazing because, you know, I could now sit there and say, I get it. These are my lessons, these are my videos. Super

Rachel: 7:53

helpful was a really interesting exercise to do. Yeah, it was kind

Katie: 7:57

of amazing because you know, you always think in your head, but like you normally only teach one, maybe another level at the same time, but blowing it up this way. Yeah. It's kind of neat to see how that happens

Rachel: 8:09

now in terms of creating whatever you're going to record, I would say. If you're going through and creating slide decks, if you're doing a screen share, then you wanna keep it as visual as you can. So add lots of images and really minimize the amount of text that's on your slides. And this kind of goes back to some neuroscience, neuro learning kinds of thinking is, you know, you can't actually process and read. As you are trying to listen to something, so minimizing that text on your slides is going to help your students take in the information a lot better than if it was cluttered with words.

Katie: 8:52

Now, word of caution. Don't just put images for the sake of images. Like there needs to be a clear connection. Any extra images will just distract from what you're trying to do. So it has to be very purposeful in the images that you're

Rachel: 9:07

choosing. Yeah, for sure. And it's almost better if, as you are. Recording, like maybe it's a base image and then you're adding and layering onto that image. So you know that works really well in a lot of science type topics, like especially physics. Physics works really well for that. You kind of have like a base image and then you start building in the information and you're actually annotating on the slides as you go and you're recording it. And that adds a lot of value. But you're right. So. Don't throw in a gif, you know, just for sake of it being a funny joke, unless maybe it's related to your contents, then I think you can get away with that a little bit. Yeah, definitely.

Katie: 9:51

The other thing to consider is how you can make it interactive, um, because you really do want kids to engage with your lesson. It can't just be a sit and get. But consider putting in like some interactive questions throughout or something that they can kind of, you know, work through as they're

Rachel: 10:07

watching. Yeah, so there's some great tools, things like EDpuzzle or now Screencastify. If you go back and listen to episode 64, we talk all about the interactive questions there. Those are really great tools to add in those kind of questions. But I would also take that a step further and I would say within your video, Plan for places where you get your students to say, pause the video and try something, or pause the video, go find someone else and connect with them around this topic, and then come back and restart the video again. I like those kind of things

Katie: 10:41

too. You can even have some sort of close writing activity where they're kind of doing it as they're watching. That helps some English language learners in particular, if they're lower, kind of in that step continuum. But, um, it's really just anything to get them interacting with that video and with the content that you're, you're trying to teach them.

Rachel: 11:00

Yeah. And what I really like about this, now that you mentioned the. Note taking is you can actually then take your videos and plan notes for them in different sort of levels of support. So really differentiating the notes that go along with the videos that students are taking. So you could have it set up, you know, depending on, on your class and your students. Maybe you're getting them to just take freehand notes and practicing that kind of skill. And then you could also have another sort of differentiated set where it's. Scaffolded a little bit with some titles and subtitles, but then they're adding their own stuff in. You could then go down and have sentence starters where you know you're giving them those sentence starters and they can start jotting in the words that come after. Or you can go down even further and add in the sentence frames. So doing something more clothes, and you could create a set of those. That go along with each of your instructional videos. Yeah, it takes time, but then you're truly differentiating and allowing your students to pick. The level of support that they need as they're working through. Another consideration

Katie: 12:11

is to provide some guiding questions that they can read before watching a video. That way it kind of gets them thinking about key terms or concepts, and then as they're watching, they're kind of, they know what to listen for. They know what to watch for, and, and it makes it more. Of an effective

Rachel: 12:28

watch. Yeah, a lot of my guided notes that I started creating sort of the last year I was in the classroom and what I would still continue going forward are actually based on retrieval practice. And so I know I've talked about this in like episodes many, many episodes ago, but what you do is. You have your students watch a certain piece of the video, you get them to pause it, and then I, instead of my notes having just kind of the titles or subtitles, they're more question based. So it'll say, um, it'll ask them a question and ask them to them, put it in their own words. So they're pausing the video at that point and then writing down what. They remember and what they can recall and retrieve from that memory of just seeing that piece in the instructional video. And then they can rewind and go back and and add in the other stuff. So they're building in some of that retrieval practice as their note taking too.

Katie: 13:25

Nice. Uh, and in terms of the actual recording, make sure it's, you make sure you insert your personality. Yes. Because the whole point of this is that you're still the teacher and your personality and who you are is still there. It's just you're recording yourself instead of being in front of

Rachel: 13:40

everybody. Yeah. Have fun. Put in those corny jokes, you know, I've got, I've got a lot of good science ones that just tend to come out naturally and it, yeah, it's a lot of fun when you include your own personality. I would say go even further though, and it's not the easiest thing to see your face on video, but show your face. Yep. And. That's not something I started out with with recording instructional videos, but as I'm kind of thinking about going back and recording new videos for my courses and content going forward, I would show my face even though I don't really want to. Yeah, it can be

Katie: 14:20

tough, but it's totally worth it. Like it, it really does make that connection. And for students that do rely on lip reading as well as listening, I. You'd be surprised how much more effective their understanding can be if you give them that extra format

Rachel: 14:36

as you're recording videos, you're, you're doing usually like hand movements or you're making facial expressions or something like that. So, yeah. So Katie's making a facial expression at me right now. But you, you can't portray that in just your voice, as we say, as we're recording a podcast. Right. I know, but. I digress. Showing your face, it's just that extra point of connection for your students. Yeah, it really does

Katie: 15:05

help and I am like I am known. You can always tell what I am thinking when you look at my face. And my students take advantage of that on a daily basis, but it helps them. It guides them. So yeah, incorporate who you are and incorporate your

Rachel: 15:22

actual face. One of the other big tips that I have is your recording time. Keeping it short, short, short, short. So it depends on the age of students that you are recording videos for. For secondary students like high school, nine through 12, even seven, eight, I would say like between six to like nine minutes is kind of pushing it in terms of an instructional video, really six around the six minute mark is pretty ideal. There's a lot of studies out there that show after 10 minutes like kids are checking out and they are no longer engaged in your video.

Katie: 15:59

I'm going to admit, as a teacher, If you give me an instructional video that is like 10 minutes or more, I'm probably not really listening all that well, and I've moved on to multitasking and they do say that teachers make the worst students, so perhaps. Perhaps I'm just a bad student. But yeah. And Al also consider the students you have in your classroom because not everybody is going to be a highly academic student that can sit there for longer periods of time. We have such a range, inability, such a range in even like. Ability to focus for such a long period of time. Like for me, for English language learners, I want to keep it like, I don't want any more than six minutes. That's kind of where I'm gonna tap out and say, okay, it's time to stop. So how can I make my language more concise? Or, you know, how can I make this into two videos?

Rachel: 16:51

So, For sure, and I would say any ages, even younger than that. Six minutes is even too long. Like elementary age. I'd be aiming for three, maybe four minutes at most. Yeah, totally. The last sort of tip. You don't have to include this, but if you do have pieces of information that are on your slides, I would highly recommend that you use animations that are built into whatever slide deck kind of program you have. So Google Slides get each bullet point to come in and animate and fade in as you're talking about it, rather than showing all the information in one piece. So just kind of controlling the flow of information as you go and as you are creating and, and recording those instructional videos can be really helpful. It helps your students to focus on just what you're talking about. Yeah, it's, it's

Katie: 17:47

almost like highlighting like those key features, right? So you're just, when there's an animation that brings in a new term, now they're paying attention again. It's kind of like that visual cue to help them focus on what's happening. I have one more piece of advice and, and tell me if it works or not. Make sure that students understand where you're going with it. So how you package your instructional videos into like, I don't know if you wanna say like units, concepts. Something to kind of help. It makes sense. So if I'm teaching an essay, you know, maybe, you know, that's my overall unit, but I have many lessons in between and they can kind of see that progression and my end goal and where I'm going with it. So maybe at the beginning of a unit, you're explaining what the end goal is and then they're going through those videos. It, it just helps keep the whole process transparent for students and they're not like, well, what am I gonna do next? What am I doing next? Like they can kind of start applying it to a future goal.

Rachel: 18:44

Right? Yeah. That that makes sense. Okay, so those are tips. In terms of the actual recording process, what I would say is after you've kind of considered all of those different tips, the first thing you wanna do is create any slides or docs or whatever you're going to screencast for your video first, and get that planned out. Before you hit record.

Katie: 19:07

Yeah. You wanna make sure you're ready. You wanna make sure you have that kind of broken down. Make sure each slide is going to be effective and not just there for the sake of being a slide. And yeah, get that going. And work with people like if you're co-teaching, make sure it makes sense to other people too. Have them take a look at it and give you feedback. Mm-hmm.

Rachel: 19:25

Yeah, there's nothing to say. You can't all in your course team create the slide decks that you're all going to screen record. And then you just go off and record your own version of it. Like why not collaborate on that? Because that's gonna save some time. Totally. I would also say that, you know, the more time you, you kind of spend in this preparation phase, the easier it is that that recording piece is gonna go as planned and you're gonna be able to record it quickly. Because you are super prepared to record. When I remember

Katie: 19:57

when I was first creating instructional videos, uh, whether it be PD or what, I would hit record thinking I was ready. I'm good. I have my, my information that I wanna cover, and then my mind would go blank. Consider giving yourself like the step-by-step. Here are the fir like the topics, give topics or keywords to help kind of guide you as you're going through the recording, because otherwise, It does feel weird to record for the first few times. And so then you might all, you might go blank. You might be like, what was I doing again? I think I caught it all. And then you realize you miss something and have to do it again. So almost like scripted out. Don't do word for word script, but do like key words cuz you wanna keep it

Rachel: 20:39

conversational. Yeah. So if you're using a tool like Google Slides, you could even put those in your speaker notes. And have those key points in there. And then when you go to screen record, instead of going into present mode and presenting your full screen, if you click the little dropdown arrow beside the present button, it's got a presenter view and then you can present it. Your slides look nice in presentation view, but then it gives you your speaker's notes off to the side in a separate window, so then you can take that separate window, just have it off to the side and kind of look at your key points as you're going

Katie: 21:16

through, and then just set up whatever you're using to record in such a way that it only records the tab that you are doing. Your presentation in, which I think kind of brings us to tools because there's so much out there. We can give you some suggestions or some tools that we think would be helpful, but please note that they are just suggestions. Every board and district has their own list of tools, their own preferences, et cetera. So. Take it with a grain of salt. Check out the ones if you want to or just use the ones you're used to. Before we talk

Rachel: 21:47

about tools though, really, really quick. I think we just kind of need to go back to what we said at the beginning is like we're not going for professional. Mm-hmm. Crazy kind of production value we're going for effective in terms of delivering the information. So one of my sort of favorite sayings over the past year or so has been Go for, done not perfect. Yep. So, Try and record your screencast in one take and just be okay with any mistakes that show up. You, you don't wanna spend a ton of time in the recording stage or editing, like, don't even edit your videos. No,

Katie: 22:25

you, you really do want to, uh, minimize that and. To be honest, it's human to make mistakes and I, and I think it's important that students hear us make mistakes and correct ourselves because then they know it's okay. It's a culture of we make mistakes, but we correct it and we move on. Versus a culture of it has to be perfect because I find with my English language learners, if they get into this culture of perfection, they're afraid to make mistakes to the point where, They don't even wanna speak. And that becomes problematic when you're trying to learn a language. Yes.

Rachel: 22:57

Yeah. You do need to practice speaking it, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I would say I actually have been in teaching with instructional videos for many, many years. I've used them in different ways in my classroom, not always the same way. But I have certain videos that I know I have mistakes in. And so they're almost now kind of, uh, like a guiding post in that if my students are not asking me a question or not going, isn't that wrong, then that's telling me that they're not actually understanding the material. Nice. And I just, I've, I've just chosen not to rerecord those videos because they're actually very telling for me as a teacher and, and telling me where their understanding is of those concepts. So there, there are bonuses for making mistakes. Awesome.

Katie: 23:49

Okay. Tools. Tools. So first I would say the tools you want to use in terms of your lesson, it's really gonna depend on what you wanna do. I like slides, we're, we're a Google board. It, it makes sense to use slides for us. So that's probably what I would start with is slides itself, depending on the concept. I

Rachel: 24:09

would start with slides two. You know, that's, that's sort of my go-to is I will have kind of all that. Background, like the images or the text or whatever I want in my video. A lot of my slides are actually really, really bare. Now it's funny because as I've kind of gone through the years of teaching, like when I first started teaching, my slides were full of information and now 11 years in. I barely have anything on my slides. Like if, if it's a chemistry problem that we're solving, like it's just the text of the problem and that's it. Or if we're talking about some concept, usually it's a diagram and that's it. And then I annotate all over it. So I'll take slides and I take it in terms of recording. I'll bring that into, explain everything cuz that's kind of one of my favorite tools for recording and annotating at the same time. I

Katie: 25:01

was going to say like that's a pretty good tool too, especially if you're gonna do like problems, math, et cetera. Those are awesome tools for those types of

Rachel: 25:09

classes. But yeah, pretty much any kind of presentation software is gonna work. So if you are a Microsoft Board, use PowerPoint, that makes sense. If you're on a Mac keynote is great. I have barely used Keynote, but I know that, um, it's, it's a very effective tool. You can even do things like Prezi or I've recently been playing with Geni Lee and that's kind of a fun interactive presentation tool. So there, there's lots of presentation tools out there that you can use and I think it kind of depends on what you have available and what your needs are. I was

Katie: 25:45

actually going to say there's been a bit of a resurgence with Prezi, especially cuz it's very interactive with Zoom and so like there are tools that work well. In your video conferencing type of a, a program, and you, and you can also record from those, right? And so some people may choose to use Google Meet to record and then do some cropping at the end or teams if you can record from there, which I believe you can. Or Zoom, right? Like that can be your video recording if that's how you want to do it.

Rachel: 26:16

Yeah, those are all really great tools to record from and, and record really easily. I know a lot of people, like they, at the beginning of the pandemic, they didn't really have the capacity to learn video recording like Screencasting tools on top of Google Meet. And so I know I, I helped a lot of staff at that beginning to just record their Google meet. Like share their screen, record their Google Meet. And so they were only learning one tool, but it served all the purposes that they needed at that time. And

Katie: 26:46

I think that that really does go back to what capacity you have. We're not looking for a beautifully produced product at the end. We're looking to teach our students something. And so always go back to that purpose because pretty doesn't mean effective. That being said, like if you're comfortable with Screencastify, Screencast, amatic, any of these video recording tools? I mean, feel free to use those. Like, it all depends

Rachel: 27:11

on your comfort level. There's also Loom, which I kind of like, I haven't used it a whole lot, but the reason I like it is because it puts your face in a circle instead of a square. Mm-hmm. And it's just different. Yeah, it does change it up. It does. So that's one. The other one that I have come across recently, and I recorded a video with this over the past week is the Flipgrid shorts. Oh my goodness. Okay. So what Flipgrid Shorts does or what you can do in their now, Is you can choose a virtual background and you can choose your screen as your virtual background, and then you can set your picture down into one of the corners, so you're basically getting a green screen effect and you're, you're actually in your slides, which is, which is really cool. And so it, it. It looks pretty good. I mean, the virtual background's not perfect because I, I kind of move around when I, when I record videos, and so you can see like the background moving around behind my head, but it was, it was a lot of fun.

Katie: 28:17

That does sound really neat. I like that. So if, if you can use Flipgrid, then consider that as another option, right? It's, it's kind of neat to be. In your presentation. Yeah,

Rachel: 28:26

and then they also, I haven't played around with it too much, but I know that they have whiteboarding features, so you can draw on whatever you're recording as well. So that's kind of like an all in one tool. Now the caveat with Flipgrid shorts is you are limited to 10 minutes. But really your videos shouldn't be any longer than that anyway. So it's almost like you got that countdown timer, and it does, it has a little timer as you're recording, that counts down. So it's forcing you to stay within those kind of bumpers that you're defining for yourself.

Katie: 28:59

And I think one piece of advice I have while you are recording, learn the keyboard shortcuts. So if you are able to pause a recording because you realize you kind of forget what you're supposed to say next, or you just need to take a breath because you're feeling overwhelmed, knowing those shortcuts, you can then do that. It's perfect. And then, you know, hit record again when you're ready to hit record

Rachel: 29:21

again. And I think that's why I kind of really love, and I keep going back to explain everything. So I will record on my iPad. And what I really, really love about that is you can record it slide by slide, so you don't have to like, you can hit record and just flip through your slides, but you can also just record one slide and then move on to the next. Record the next one, and record the next one. And so, That's really nice in terms of, uh, staying organized as you're recording. The other advice though I have is if you're gonna record on something like your iPad and you're using an Apple pencil, that can get really noisy. I don't know if you, have you ever tried that, Katie? I've used

Katie: 30:04

the Apple pencil to like explain things in Google Meet and whatnot, but I haven't done like an actual, like, lesson recording, but I can you hear all the

Rachel: 30:12

taps? Yes. So if you're just using the built-in microphone on your iPad, then you will hear all the tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Right? Yeah. So, What I do instead, and this works with most iPads, as long as you have the right adapters. If you have an external microphone, you can plug that in and it will pick up your external microphone. Or if you have an older generation iPad or have one with a headphone jack, just even using the headphones. That come with an Apple iPhone, for example, like something with the built-in mic on your headphones itself, it's going to sound so much better. And you know, it doesn't totally get rid of that tap, tap, tap necessarily, but it gets rid of most of it. Nice. Yeah, I never would've thought of that good call as a a math science person who loves to annotate on the screen and like, Absolutely has to annotate on the screen for an instructional video y You learn a lot of that stuff over the years.

Katie: 31:17

That's awesome. So another tool that Rachel has used far more is O B s. As, as what a tool that you can use for recording. Mm-hmm.

Rachel: 31:26

Yeah. And that's kind of taking it to the next level. So, you know, if you're, if you're not so comfortable with video production and don't kind of wanna go through that learning curve, I would say that's not a tool that you want to go with. The reason I like it. Okay. And, I don't know. Okay. I, I should tell you the story, right on A couple days ago, I was trying to record a video and I wanted to place myself in the slide. So I kind of wanted to use, I have a green screen, so I wanted to do the green screen effect and like make it look a little bit more professional cuz it's something that I'm creating to share out with our board. Okay, so like there's, there's a little bit more weight behind the kinds of videos that I'm making this year, and I got my green screen out. I put it up, got o bs, open. All of that works well, but I, I don't post a lot of myself, uh, pictures of myself on social media, but I have very, very, very pale skin. And so when I had the green screen and I pulled the green screen effect out, half of my face disappeared too. Oh no. I know, right? Oh man. It was awful. And so I played with lighting, I played with placement of my green screen. I played with everything. It just wasn't working. And so that's when I kind of went on the hunt for a different tool to use because O Bs wasn't meeting my needs. And so I. Then I came across Flipgrid Shorts and I feel like I'm, I'm very late to the Flipgrid shorts game. But that met my needs. Exactly. I was able to place myself in there. I didn't have to use my green screen. It wasn't washing out my face. And so it was perfect. That, and that, that kind

Katie: 33:11

of goes with what we're always saying, right? Like, find one that fits your purpose. Don't feel like you have to make a tool fit. What you're doing. There's lots

Rachel: 33:18

of tools out there. Now, the reason I like o Bs is because you can pull in multiple things on your, they call them scenes. So you could bring in your slide deck and maybe have it in one sort of area. You could have, say a Jamboard open for annotating in another area. You could have your webcam on there. You can do green screen stuff like you can. You can do a lot with O Bs. Like it is super powerful, but it does come with a learning curve.

Katie: 33:45

No, totally. And so disclaimer, I won't be using it for this round of videos. You really do need to have the time to be and capacity to be able to, so give yourself some grace, allow yourself a bit of freedom to kind of just. Bare bones video record and make it work.

Rachel: 34:05

I think some of the final tools we can mention just quickly is stuff that's built into the system you're using already. So Katie and I are both Mac users, QuickTime Player is built in and. That's actually a pretty decent recorder. I can, if I wanna plug in my iPad into my MacBook, I can actually record my iPad screen from there. So if I wanna like demo me going from app to app and like doing different things in the apps that makes sense for me to record a video. Yeah, I'm sure Windows or PC has something built too. I'm not so familiar with it though. No, nor am

Katie: 34:43

I. I always use my Mac.

Rachel: 34:45

So we apologize to any PC users out there. Yeah, I, I think that kind of wraps it up. We could talk more about enhancing those videos and talk about EDpuzzle and Nearpod and all that kind of good stuff. I feel like that is for another day though, so we'll leave that for now. That's just how to. Create your videos plan for them, why you wanna do videos in the first place, and how to record them and what kind of tools you have available. Yeah. So

Katie: 35:16

perhaps we, um, de de we'll dedicate an episode to, you know, once you record your video, what can you do with it and how can you make it more interactive?

Rachel: 35:24

So what we'll do is we'll include any of the resources or links we talked about here today in our show notes, and you can access our show notes for this episode@edugals.com slash 67. That's edu g a ls.com/ 67. And if you like what you heard,

Katie: 35:41

feel free to share it with a colleague or a friend. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you don't miss out on any future

Rachel: 35:49

content. And if you have any tips or different ideas around creating effective instructional videos, So stuff that works for you that we haven't talked about here today, we would love to hear what you are doing. So you can go onto our Flipgrid at edu gals.com/flipgrid and leave us a video message there. Or you can go onto our website@edgeedugals.com and leave us a written reply. Thanks for

Katie: 36:16

listening and see you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of our edu Gals podcast. Show notes for this episode are available@edugals.com. That's edu. G A l s.com. We'd also love to hear your feedback, so leave us a message on our website,

Rachel: 36:42

and if you enjoyed what you heard, please subscribe and consider leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep being awesome and try something new.