Video tools are an important tool in a Librarian’s toolkit. Often the Librarian is asked to make videos for book trailers, training videos, or segments for the school news program.
There are many platforms available to use. Fairfax County Public School teachers are most familiar with Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and Google Classroom tools. These allowed for live video conferencing, screencasting, breakout rooms and recordings. Other tools that might be of interest to educators include Loom, Animoto and Kapwing.
Loom allows users to record themselves in a small circular bubble at the bottom corner of a screencast. Design tools allow users to draw on the screen and highlight certain features on the screen. This is an excellent tool for tutorials. I have seen several Librarians use this to show students how to log on to Destiny, the Libby App and the public library.
Animoto offers multiple templates for engaging videos. I had some technical difficulties getting my images to load and found the templates to get in the way of my creativity. I have seen this application used to make book trailers. I much prefer Adobe Sparks over this platform after my limited experience with it.
Kapawing is similar to animoto but offers more control over the product. Users can access each scene of the video and add different layers. Similar to a mixing board for sound, Kapawing offers many tools to enhance the video production process. As a novice user, I explored some of the bells and whistles but felt safer sticking to a simple product.
Always good to have exposure to new tools but could see where I would fall back to familiar applications. FCPS won’t let that happen as things will change with the introduction of Schoology in the fall. Always learning something new!
I miss Google Classroom! I also had issues getting my photos to load in Animoto. It was discouraging at first.
I also really miss/missed Google Classroom this past school year, my district switched to Canvas. Canvas has its own video recording software called Canvas Studio, but aside from some basic audio tools like trimming and removing sounds there really were not any bells and whistles.