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Stan Skrabut: I have to say I’m pretty excited about this episode. I use video all the time. As an instructional technologist, I use video to clarify something maybe for a faculty member, they have a question, I will go ahead and knock out a quick video and send it to them. I use Zoom to have meetings with people a lot cheaper than traveling across the state to meet with people that will get on a Zoom chat, but we’re also using it between our campuses to have a conversation. Video I use it extensively. Also, creating videos, just educational purposes, how to use a different piece of software, things like that. I put it to good use.
If you look around, video is everywhere. We’re using it for virtually everything that you can go on YouTube and see all these different how-to videos marketing. Video for marketing is killer that it gets more traction than simply putting out a text message. Definitely a text message, or even an image that video will get you more traction, just a way to communicate. Like I said, having meetings online, that’s a great way of using video. Recording our history. Since we figured out how to make moving pictures we’ve been using video to collect this information.
I just watched a Peter Jackson film about World War I where he had all this old footage and he managed to repurpose it and put it together in a unique way. They did some colorizing, they were able to get some folks that could lip read and actually put dialogue to the lips as they were moving because they didn’t have that dialogue before. But just getting that piece of history, that was very powerful in what video can do. Some of the ideas of what you can do with video? We use video at the community college that I’m at to hold interactive classes. We have basically three campuses, we have our Jamestown Campus, we have Olean, there’s a campus there and also in Dunkirk.
They’re roughly separated by 45 miles. It makes it especially during the winter very dangerous for students to be traveling on that distance, odds are they probably wouldn’t be traveling. What we do is we connect the classrooms together with interactive television, which is certainly video and we’re able to hold classes. There’s certainly strategies for doing this better and we keep on working on identifying those strategies. The fact that we’re recreating this magic where somebody can be in a classroom and get instruction, it was not possible, or very difficult, very expensive 15-20 years ago and here we are doing this on a regular daily basis.
We’ve also extended that a couple of times. We’ve had to weave different technologies together and we’ve brought in students who could not be there physically, for whatever reason. One young lady was confined to a wheelchair and it was difficult for her to navigate that they did not have adequate transportation for her. We piped her in into the classroom with video and it worked out just tremendously well. We can create opportunities and that same student she was able to present at a conference and a poster session. Her classmates were physically at the conference and she was brought in, in a Facebook Live Session. She could talk with other individuals about the project that they had put together.
This created a just a wonderful opportunity for this student who, for other reasons, probably would have missed out, but she was tremendously pleased and proud of what she was able to contribute. Other ways that you can use video is office hours, for example. For online courses, providing an opportunity for students to check-in in-office hours makes it very similar to having that traditional face to face interaction. It’s just one of those opportunities that you can now do very easily using technologies like Zoom. You can just pull students in. Videos are a great quick way to clarify something. You could use video to support your homework assignments where you get on video and explain it and attach that.
I have a link for the video, attach it right into the homework where students could tap in and see what your spirited intent is for that particular homework assignment. As I noted earlier, I use video to explain how to do something that a faculty member is unsure about how to do a specific task, and I’ll go ahead and create a video and walk through the procedures. It’s a lot clearer than sometimes writing those instructions out. Often, I will still jot down the step by step instructions but the video just adds clarity. You can also use it for community building. I spent a lot of time thinking about online classes, but having a student create a quick video and upload it introducing themselves, adds something.
For those that are afraid to get on camera, they could also introduce their dog but it’s a great way to build community where you’re really talking to real people as opposed to just keep typing messages into a discussion thread. Another way that students can use video is for TAs competency. Maybe you want them to show you or explain to you how to do something. One of the professors through the notes and research or a physics class asked students to get on to video and explain their answers to certain physics problems and immediately you can tell us somebody really has it, or if they’re just lucky and good at taking tests.
Being able to explain something on video, you know, you’re basically teaching it. They always say that if you can teach something, then you have a deeper knowledge of it. That also leads me to flipped instruction. In that flipped instruction, you can basically change the dynamics of the class rather than having the lecture portion in class and then send them out on their own to work out the homework issues and where they don’t have the adequate supports. You can flip that model and have them watch the lectures at home and then come into class where they actually do the actual assignments, the homework assignments, where they have supports of the instructor to be able to explain how something is done.
That’s a different strategy. Other ways that we are using video extensively? For meetings that, here in upstate New York, it gets rather cold and blowy and snowy and rather than get everybody all bundled up and drag them out of their offices, having video meetings has been very productive. I started doing using a Harvard Business Review meeting calculator to calculate how much money we would be spending for meetings. Well, we still have to have the meetings, but the travel time I calculated that and for some of our meetings, we were basically spending like $200 for the meeting just for travel.
That folks were spending, say, seven, eight minutes, getting up from their chair, gathering their belongings, moseying over to the meeting, getting seated and settled, takes about seven minutes. That it takes that much time to go back to their office and get settled in. If you’re spending that much time traveling and you’ve got three meetings a day, that’s 45 minutes that you’re in transit, which can be significantly reduced by using a tool like Zoom to have that meeting. What could you do with say another 40 minutes in your schedule? Maybe help retain students or something like that. Meetings are another great place.
I would say with a tool like Zoom, you also have that chat feature which allows for sidebar conversations, but also the sharing of resources, the sharing of ideas, the sharing of questions that you can use throughout that meeting. Few more ideas, other ways that you may want to use video in your classroom is, say weekly check-ins that you can summarize the topic or open a topic or do both at the same time and just add closure to the week or getting the week started. Feedback, I use this a lot in the courses that I teach, that if I’m reviewing a paper, for example, and I go ahead and bleed on the paper, I will also throw in a video and I use a tool called GoVideo. It’s something that is attached to my browser. I select that and I can walk through the paper and explain what my perspective is and what I was looking for and how they can improve the paper. You can do this for all different topics. If they provide a presentation, you can walk through the presentation, but having this online feedback makes it really personal. I get a lot of positive reviews out of this, providing that feedback for different projects.
Something that you can hold in your hand, get in front of the video. You can do screencasting which if the project happens to be digital, you can display it on the screen and capture video at the same time. Very useful at answering questions. I’ve talked about this quite a bit, but if you have the muddiest point, students going out the door, maybe take a few minutes to look at their questions and put together a quick video to answer their questions. Modeling an activity that you can show students from that expert perspective on how to do something and you can model that activity. Foreign languages, video, it can be essential for sharing ideas or sharing concepts with a foreign language.
They get to see native speakers talk because you don’t have to create all the videos yourself. There’s a lot of videos out there. I’m sure that some meet your caliber and that could be useful for your class. I see at the college that I’m at, in the classroom, the physical classroom, they’re using video quite often to illustrate points. I’m sure that going on to YouTube, you can find adequate videos in all these different languages where you have native speakers speaking the language and find videos on different topics that would be useful for your class. There’s different types of tools that you can use for creating videos. These tools vary based on what type of video that you’re creating.
If you’re just creating a standalone video that you’re going to post on to YouTube, a good tool or a tool that I find very easy to use is Camtasia. Apples has I believe iMovie and that’s another good tool. But Camtasia I found to be very easy, very straightforward tool for putting together a video. Also, you can do screencast, you can pull in all types of different resources, do that Ken Burns effect where you’re pulling up images and zooming in and moving and panning and things like that. Great for putting together quick videos that you can put up on YouTube. For a more interactive video, there’s other tools that you can use. Skype is a common one.
Zoom, we’ve fallen in love with Zoom, and it’s one that we use all the time. Now the benefits of an interactive video is that you have other people that can communicate with you at the same time. It’s basically face-to-face with a group of people. You can talk out issues. Great for meetings, great for interactive classrooms, those tools. We also use a tool called StarLeaf. StarLeaf is one of the programs that we use for interactive between our classrooms and also Polycom. Those are different ones that we’re using. But other interactive video tools, WebEx, Collaborate, those are other tools that you can get in. Some of them have additional benefits where they allow text chat.
Some of them allow you to raise your hand. You have to figure out what features you want when you decide upon the type of video that you want to try to capture. Another category is broadcasting. Broadcasting is more of a one-way communication tool. Typically, you would do a webinar, where you are presenting information to a large number of people typically hundreds. There are specific tools for that. YouTube Live is one that I use with great frequency but also Facebook Live. Depending on what I’m doing, I may pick one of those particular tools and just do it live.
At my house, I have a special piece of software called Wirecast, which allows me to also share my screen, pull in additional video feeds, and audio feeds and things like that. It’s really powerful. Periscope’s another tool that you can do a broadcast. Individuals on Periscope and also Instagram Live. You can do short videos there where people can let you know if they like your video, but also have the ability to chat at a very basic level. Those are some tools and different reasons why you would want to use those particular tools. How do you get started with this? How do you get started with putting video into your classroom?
There’s a lot of folks that are getting a little tense when you start talking about getting on camera, that they’re not comfortable on camera. I recommend well, don’t get on camera right away. There’s other ways to do it. First, is using YouTube videos. I would say go do a search for YouTube videos, see what’s out there that address your needs, and then either link to them or embed them into your learning management system. You can just find the URL and very simply add it to your course. If it’s a face-to-face course and you’re giving out paper handouts, what you can also do is run that link. It’s not so big the type, you can run it through a URL shortener like Bitly. Bitly is a good one.
That’s what I use all the time. You can shorten the URL or even create a QR code. Coming up on Tuesday, we’re doing our faculty development day and I am showing a variety of things on how to use Google, Google Drive, and Google Docs. One of the things I did is I created these very short little videos of only a couple minutes showing how to do various tasks. I put together a worksheet that has the name of the task, it has a short link to a URL code that I created. But I also put in a QR code, which allows them to pull out their phone and with a QR code reader immediately that can be taken to that particular site. That’s ways that you may want to add to documents that you are creating.
It’s a powerful way of adding it to maybe OER content that you’re creating, you add that video. Other ways that you can use YouTube is have your students create them. I have done this with my students success class. They have been tasked to create like a two to two and a half-minute video dealing with a topic from our student success. I have to tell you, that these videos have been wonderful. Students have been tremendously creative and very enthusiastic about making these different videos. Going out there and finding something from YouTube, you can link to it, but I would also take it up to the next level where you create YouTube playlist.
If you happen to be a history instructor, and you’re talking about World War II and maybe talking about Bastogne, and the Battle of the Bowls, that you could create a playlist specifically about that battle. Anytime you find a YouTube video that’s related to that that you like, you can just add it to the playlist. Or if you create a video and upload it, you can add it to whatever playlist that you’ve created. A playlist is basically a series of videos that are around that topic. You’re curating this content for your viewers, your students. It just makes it a lot easier than going ahead and linking to 10 or 20 different videos, you can just give them one playlist that is already curated that content.
In YouTube, there are other people who have probably created playlists around certain topics. Now, naturally, you want to go look at these topics, but you can go out there and find these. The other day, one of the students in my class found a video or a collection of videos dealing with economics. I passed that whole channel and playlists over to the economic instructors that we have and so far, they seem to be very happy with that. That was a really quick way of doing that. From finding YouTube videos, creating YouTube playlists, probably the next step up is to actually go out and create your own videos. When you are creating your own videos. There’s all kinds of tools that you can use. Camtasia is a tool that I already talked about, which is very powerful because it allows you to pull in all kinds of resources. If you want to create a down and dirty type video, Snagit is a great tool. GoVideo is a tool that I use almost daily. Screencastify is another tool that’s basically an extension add on for your browser. I use a Google Chrome browser, and you can put it on there. All you do is click the video or click the link and you’ll start the process for creating a video. You can decide if you’re going to use the webcam or not, but otherwise, you may want to just do a screencast and just capture the audio.
Other tools or QuickTime Player explains everything. Those are tools that you should consider. When you are creating this five-minute video, here’s some tips that you need to think about. First of all, plan ahead. Have an idea what you’re going to say, what order you’re going to say it. If you really want to do it well, you’re going to storyboard it and script it. In most cases, if it’s just something quick just have an idea what you’re going to say. That way you’re going to come out and be more natural.
If you prepare well upfront the idea is to naturally give the presentation that you don’t want to be too stiff, you want to just be more relaxed, more informal, casual, conversational tone to it. Cool thing about this is you don’t need a lot of special equipment. Having a webcam, absolutely important. A good webcam and I would say good lighting. If you can get natural light, that is perfect. You don’t want to be in a dark room. I see a lot of faculty. They’re recording these things late at night and the room is dark.
Getting some cheap LED lights that you would use maybe from an automotive store or a hardware store something that lights things up that’ll significantly improve your video right away. Cool thing is you don’t need a lot of equipment. Headset and a microphone I would not even use that. I would use the webcam and use the microphone in the webcam. I have a webcam. It’s a Logitech 920, it’s been absolutely wonderful, picks up sound really, really well. When you set up the camera, set it up so it’s just above the height of your eyes.
You want to be looking up into the camera. Not far but just a little bit. Maybe it’s aimed at your forehead or something. It’s just looking above what’s eye level. Think about where you are creating this video. Think about what’s behind you and what people can see. You don’t want it necessarily to be too distracting, and that they’re not focusing on you and your message. keep that in mind.
You may even want to consider having, if you’re doing a lot of these videos going someplace else, using your smartphone or your iPad, setting that up and capturing a video is also those are also great tools that have great capability for capturing your audio, or your audio and video. Those are great tools. Forget about perfection. Do it to the best of your ability, but don’t worry. Don’t lose a lot of sleep on perfection.
You are not perfect in front of your classroom. Students know this, they appreciate this. That’s why they like you. You’re human. Be authentic in front of the camera. Be yourself. Most importantly smile. When you are giving your presentation smile. That lifts it up a little bit. Ideally, you want to change what’s on the screen on a regular basis. We won’t get to the extremes of what’s happening in the video world right now.
The video world is saying change the screen about eight seconds, every eight seconds, we’re not going to probably go that extreme, but definitely every half a minute, put something new up on the screen. It keeps the attention. That important. That’s why you’re doing video in the first place. At the end of the day, your video needs to be accessible. Having a transcript available or making sure that you have good audio, you need to accommodate everybody that’s going to see you.
If somebody is deaf, and they’re watching your video, you have not served them if you don’t have closed caption or transcription so take time for them. Once you’re done with the video, go ahead and add it to your course materials, integrate it with the rest of your lessons. Try to use prompts that will guide your students so they will be attentive to what’s being presented in your video, your presentation. You want to have maybe activities before the video to set it up some activities after the video, things to think about.
The last section that I want to talk about is flipped instruction. Flipped instruction. I mentioned it earlier, that where you’re interchanging the lectures with the homework. Rather than do the homework at home, you’re doing the homework in the class and doing the lectures at home. One of the I’d say really important pieces is to keep your video short. Think about keeping them down to one objective.
One objective that you want students to focus on creating a video just around that. Five to eight minutes, you don’t want them that long. I would say think about your own viewing habits. When you are going out and getting ready to watch a video, what’s the first thing that you do? The first thing that you do is you look at how long that video is. What do you do if you see that video is 45 minutes? You’re not going to watch the video.
Have you ever found yourself watching eight, five-minute videos and suddenly 45 minutes have passed? Think of it that way, that keeping them short the odds are that they will stack a lot of videos and watch them all. If you have one 45 minutes in their mind, they’re going to say, “No, I’m not able to do this,” and will not watch that video.
The other benefit of keeping them short is if you happen to get something wrong or the content needs to be updated, you don’t have to create a 45-minute video.
All you have to do is redo that five-minute video. That allows you to make it a little easier on yourself in the future. Plus, you can reuse these shorter videos, if you had a special topic that you thought was appropriate for another class, you could take that video and put it into that other class. Where if you had your whole lecture for 45 minutes and tried to do that students would not appreciate that. Consider that.
When you are thinking of a flipped model, think about when you’re producing those videos when you want it to actually be released, and work backwards from there. Backward design is appropriate here in that if I want to release this on the 1st of March, I need to have it in my hand maybe four days prior to that. What are the steps going backward? When do I actually have to create this video.
Because creating a video requires outlining what you’re going to say and making sure you have your visuals together and your lighting and your camera and all those different little elements come into play when you’re creating this video. You have to be prepared for that. At the end of the day, you still have to teach well. You’re not advocating your teaching responsibilities by creating video, you still have to create good instruction. Keep that in mind when you create these videos. Use prompts when you’re building these videos.
That inside of a video, you may have them looking for a specific thing. You may post questions in there, different things that you want them to focus on, and just have that available.
I cannot tell you how excited I am about this particular topic.
That going out and creating videos is really powerful as far as a multimedia element in your classroom, that it’s a great way to support learning, right very much in line with Universal Design for Learning, that we’re providing choice and support, so you can add video in as a choice for students to be able to demonstrate knowledge. You can also use video to support them.
That you can show, you can model good instruction, model how you want them to do things, be able to answer questions, very powerful tools. Before we go, I would like to put a quick plug in for my book, Read to Succeed.
