Creating Educational Videos for the Use in an Online Classroom: Screencasts and Slideshows
The unprecedented growth in online education has given us the power to use multimedia content in our educational material. Educational videos are one of the preferred content forms among educators. There are many advantages in creating educational videos. You can convey precisely the information that you want to convey and save time because you do not waste time searching for a video. Also, your personality, sense of humor and passion for your subject give an edge to your custom-created video.
Why make your own videos for online classroom?
While there are many videos to be found online, there are many advantages to creating your own videos. When you create your own videos:
- You are able to convey precisely the information that you want to convey.
- You save time because you do not waste time searching for a video.
- You can control the tone, pace, and ideas that a represented.
- You are able to convey your personality, sense of humor and passion for your subject.
- The online classroom becomes your classroom and your students get to know you!
What are the different types of videos for online classroom?
1. You, talking and explaining something on the screen
If you want a recording of yourself talking and explaining material to your students, you want to make a screencast. These are explained in this paper. Screencasts are good if you want to simply explain material to students, such as the parts of a cell or the punctuation of a sentence.
2. Content with music and captions
If you want a catchy and engaging slideshow, with captivating and exciting graphics, you want to make a Slideshow. Slideshows are also explained in this paper.
Slideshows are good if you want to emotionally engage your students. You can create a video to help students explore an idea, like “Racism” or an era like “Victorian England.” You can also create review of the concepts that you learned in a unit or introduce your next unit.
3. Animated Video
With cartoon characters talking and saying what you want them to say, go to the second paper in this series.
Animated videos are good if you want to demonstrate dialogue. If you need to explain something complex, it is useful to have two people talking. One person can ask questions, and the other person can answer them.
Screencast
A screencast can be made in minutes. Once you know how to use the tools, you simply open up the picture that you want to narrate, press record, and say what you want to say. Here are some excellent tools for screencasts:
- Jing is an easy and free piece of software from TechSmith. With Jing, you can simply capture your voice while you are narrating a screen or doing an activity, save it, and make it available to your students on screencast.com. The screencasts are in a format which easily uploads into the WizIQ classroom, so they are available in both the synchronous and the asynchronous classroom. Screencasts can be up to 5 minutes long.
- ScreenR is also really easy. ScreenR is specifically designed for the quick and public sharing of screencasts. Since all of the screencasts are public, it cannot be used to provide private feedback to students. It is, however, easy to make a video, download it into your computer, and then delete the public component of it.
How you might use Screencast in an online classroom
- You can use a screencast to introduce prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.
- You might want to deliver a quick lesson about how to use quotation marks. While there are many exercises and prepared lessons readily available, a personal screencast is a nice way to connect with your students.
- You could demonstrate a poetry based assignment. Here is an activity based on a poem.
- You might record your comments on a student’s paper by taking a picture of the paper and speaking your comments.
Slideshows
Slideshows are so much more than just pictures on a screen. Slideshow creators use interesting graphics and stylistic themes to make it really easy to create an educational video. Slideshows are particularly good when you want to engage your students visually and emotionally, perhaps helping them to connect to a character in a book or people from a different era. All of these sites create captivating videos that are easy to embed or upload into your online courses.
Animoto, Photopeach, and Masher are all very similar. With these sites, you pick a stylistic theme for your slideshow. The theme uses graphics and fonts to artistically unify your show. Then, you upload pictures, music, and text to go along with the concept that you are discussing. Animoto has the best library of clips and pictures for your use. Photopeach has a really great quiz function.
How you might use Slideshows in an online classroom
- You might create a slideshow to review a unit.
- You can create a slideshow introduce your students to symbols in literature.
- You could use a slideshow tool to create a show depicting vocabulary.
- You could have the students make art work about what they like to read.
WizIQ: An online classroom and course management system
The WizIQ classroom and Course Management System (CMS) are perfectly suited for your newly created videos, slideshows and tutorials. WizIQ has a virtual classroom with 6 way live audio and video streaming, a fully equipped white board, media player and everything that you need to conduct live and asynchrounous online classes. The videos that you are making are easy to upload and share from WizIQ.
Login to your WizIQ Account -> Go to your home page ->On the left side bar, you will see an Upload Content button. Press that button.
That button will take you to a dialogue box, where you can upload the video. If you are creating a Course, there is a box to check if you want the video uploaded directly into the course. Otherwise, the information will be available in your content library.
Accessing the video once, you are already in class
- Click on your content library
- The files in your content library will appear, including any videos that you have uploaded. Click on Add to Class.
- It will take a few moments to process and then your video will be here.
- When you need it in the class, you click on your Media Player, and the video will be there, ready to go.
With WizIQ, you can easily create and use videos to help make your online teaching great!
