Video has become an important resource for use in education. It is often integrated as part of traditional courses, serves as a resource for many blended courses, and may be the main information delivery mechanism in some fully online courses. Several studies have shown that video can be a highly effective educational tool.

Educational video comes in many different forms, below find some examples:

Lecture recordings

 

Screencasts

 

Talking head video

 

Presentations

 

Classroom recordings

 

Interviews

 

Simulations

 

Animations

 

It has been argued that you can now find a video online to learn just about anything.

 

The potential strengths of video as a medium for instruction include:

  • linking concrete events and phenomena to abstract principles and vice versa
  • the ability of students to stop and start, so they can integrate activities with video
  • providing alternative approaches that can help students having difficulties in learning abstract concepts
  • adding substantial interest to a course by linking it to real world issues
  • a growing amount of freely available high quality academic videos
  • good for developing some of the higher level intellectual skills and some of the more practical skills needed in a digital age
  • the use of low cost cameras and free editing software enables some forms of video to be cheaply produced.

The potential weaknesses of video as a medium for instruction include:

  • unless your video is captioned with subtitles it can be difficult for the hearing impaired to access
  • many educators have no knowledge or experience in using video other than for recording lectures
  • there is currently a very limited amount of high quality educational video free for downloading, because the cost of developing high quality educational video that exploits the unique characteristics of the medium is still relatively high.
  • links to video can go dead after a while, affecting the reliability of outsourced video.
  • creating original material that exploits the unique characteristics of video is time-consuming, and still relatively expensive, because it usually needs professional video production
  • to get the most out of educational video, students need specially designed activities that sit outside the video itself
  • students often reject videos that require them to do analysis or interpretation; they often prefer direct instruction that focuses primarily on comprehension. Such students need to be trained to use video differently, which requires time to be devoted to developing such skills.

Tools for creating video 

The following tools are available to help you create a video.

Jing – Jing will allow you to record whatever is on your screen, this is called a screencast. You could run a presentation using PowerPoint, show off a website, display pictures, or demonstrate how to use a piece of software.  Once you have created your video you can share it on Screencast.com

Biteable – Biteable allows you to create short videos by combining audio, media, and text. You can then save your video to YouTube for sharing

Open Broadcaster Software – Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.

Screencast-O-Matic – Allows for the creation of up to 15 minute videos capturing your screen or webcam. You can save the video file to your computer and/or upload it to YouTube.

PowToon – PowToon supports the creation of animated videos presentations.  A free account will allow for up to 5 minute watermarked videos. You can’t download the video file for free but you can host and present the video on the PowToon service.

Videoscribe – Videoscribe supports the creation of whiteboard style animations, incorporating images, text, voice, and music. There is a free 7 day trial of the software available.

Your cell phone! – Your cell phone likely includes a camera capable of filming quality video clips.  Create a video lecture, question and answer session, or tour and upload your video to YouTube for sharing.

Record from your webcam – Webcam recordings can be created with the apps Photobooth (iOS) or Camera (Windows) which are built into the operating systems.

If you have Microsoft PowerPoint on your computer you can create a video using the software.

Commercial Tools – There are also tools like Adobe Premier, Camtasia Studio, and iMovie which will allow you to create video. These tools cost money so I have not recommended them to you, if you have access to them please feel free to use!

Sharing video online 

You can share your video creation online with YouTube. When you upload a video you can make it Public, Unlisted or Private. I suggest you make the videos “unlisted” so they can not be found on YouTube and access will only be granted to people you share the link or embed code with.

How to set your video as unlisted: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/157177

The importance of captioning video 

Closed captioning makes video accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing by translating audio into text captions displayed on the screen. The captions also identify who is speaking and the emotions they are feeling, and include icons for elements such as music. Captions are also helpful for people who are learning English, as it allows them to see the words as they are being heard. Captions can be generated by drafting a script for your video, which forces you to plan what is going to be said and provides explicit planning. Furthermore, captions allow people to search the transcript of your video which can be useful for search and finding a specific passage within a video.

You do not have to create captions for the videos you will create for this course. I do encourage you to consider captioning any videos you create in your professional activities.

References 

Bates, T. (2016) Teaching in a Digital Age. Chapter 7: Pedagogical differences between media. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/9-5-3-video

Cover photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash