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Heather Clayton
Heather Clayton, the author of Making the Standards Come Alive!, is the principal of Mendon Center Elementary School in Pittsford Central School District, New York. She is also a co-author of Creating a Culture for Learning published by Just ASK. |
Many of us haven’t been trained to provide remote instruction, yet with COVID, we found ourselves quickly learning new ways to deliver content from a distance. With a new school year upon us, there are many unanswered questions. Our focus needs to be on high leverage practices that will serve us well, whether students are physically in class, learning remotely, or some combination of both.
One such practice is the inclusion of pre-recorded lessons. Recorded lessons are a way to impart information, then give our students the opportunity to apply their learning. These lessons can be watched by our students at any time and used for a variety of purposes. For example, a recorded lesson could be viewed in advance of live remote discussion with students or as a review after a live session. In addition to being powerful pre-teaching and re-teaching tools, recorded videos also serve as a resource for parents or for students who may have missed class. If we find ourselves back in a remote learning situation, the use of pre-recorded instructional videos will allow teachers to focus on the application of learning and assessment of student progress, just as they would in the physical classroom.
The thought of recording yourself on video and sharing it with others can be a daunting, however there are ways to make video lessons meaningful for your students and painless for you. Listed below are some helpful tips to follow!
When recording, be yourself. Let your personality come through so students see you as the same teacher you are in the classroom. As you are speaking, keep your tone conversational and light. It is also important to pay attention to your speaking rate, as slower is not better when it comes to instructional videos. Keep a quick pace and be enthusiastic. Lastly, it’s okay to make mistakes. While you may choose to re-record your video until it feels polished, know that just like teaching face-to-face in the classroom, it does not need to be perfection.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that because the video is short, there is less planning involved. Actually, it takes careful planning to be succinct while conveying important instructional information.
Some ideas for visuals to embed in instructional videos:
After three months of remote learning, there were many lessons learned when it comes to pre-recorded lessons. Here are some of them:
There are many apps and online resources for creating your own instructional videos. For example, videos can be created in Photos, iMovie, Zoom, Explain Everything, Screencast-O-matic, Green Screen, or Screencastify. The first step is to choose one and give it a go! Summer is a great time to practice and create a bank of instructional videos that can be used either in or out of the classroom when school resumes.
https://edpuzzle.com/
A platform for making your instructional videos both active learning and assessment tools. It includes the ability to add questions or audio notes. It will also tell you how many of your students have watched your video(s), how many times, and if they have watched until the end.
https://edpuzzle.com/media/5d3724f6d3445b410e8ba785
An example instructional video on inferences by Toni Rose Deanon. This video is also included in the Edutopia article “A Five-Step Guide to Making Your Own Instructional Videos,” included below.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-step-guide-making-your-own-instructional-videos
This Edutopia article shares strategies for making instructional videos and includes several embedded examples of videos.
http://up.csail.mit.edu/other-pubs/las2014-pguo-engagement.pdf
An empirical study of how video production decisions can affect student engagement.
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