This sandbox was really challenging for me. Even though I do a lot with technology, I have not experienced creating videos for the classroom. I used Macromedia products more than 10 years ago to create flash objects and it was a huge learning process. For this sandbox, I tried several different tools.
I did not use Loom for this Sandbox because I used it nearly every day last year when school was virtual. I used it to record my lessons with google slides presentations. Loom was a great tool for me to record myself delivering lessons. Students would watch the video presentation and then we would fill in the notes in OneNote notebooks as a class. Absent students could then watch the video and catch up with what we did in class. Each video lesson was usually followed by Nearpod interactive activities using the French vocabulary and grammar presented in the video.
For this sandbox, I first tried powtoon.com. I had to create an account and there were a ton of features available only with an upgrade. I used the “4 day gift” of free pro to create my video but I don’t know that I would pay for an upgraded account in the future.
Even though I started with a template, it was quite a learning curve just to personalize it. The one slide that did not come from the template was the citations page (the last slide). That took a lot of time to figure out how to add the objects on the timeline. If you ever used macromedia products, it was very similar with a variety of layers and objects on a timeline. But I have to say, even starting with a template, the video took me hours to customize and complete over the course of several days. I made the video below for the beginning of the school year to introduce myself. It will be particularly useful with my online students. However, I’m not sure how much I will use this tool as the amount of time it takes to make the video may make it cost prohibitive since I don’t usually have hours to spend on creating class resources. Also, without upgrading, I couldn’t download the video file and can only link it.
I also tried Animoto. I chose a template and I simply could not figure out how to even change the picture on the slide. I played with it for about an hour and gave up. I could have done research on how to use Animoto but I was looking for a straight forward tool that didn’t require a lot of technical work. To be honest, I will probably not try Animoto again.
Lastly, I played with Kapwing. I found Kapwing fairly easy to use and perhaps a bit simpler than powtoon. You see all of the elements added to the slide on the timeline. You can add elements (or delete them) and extend or reduce the amount of time and when they appear in the video. Adding the text and animating it was really easy too. Working on this short video only took me about 25 minutes – it might be a possibility to use in class to teach students how to do a class project.
For Kapwing, you have to create an account and to remove the watermarks from the video you need to upgrade. But it says that you get 3 free video downloads a month. Below is my Kapwing video – but it probably needs me to add sound of some type: Click here to see my Kapwing.