Video is a powerful instructional tool. Due to distance learning, I flipped my civics class this year. I recorded short videos with our notes for each unit. I tried to keep them short and sweet–just enough so we could build on the topic during class time.
I am very familiar with Loom, since that is what I used most of this year. It is intuitive, worked well on my school Chromebook, and didn’t take a lot of time to process or share. I like that it includes the speaker’s face in a corner; my students said they paid more attention if they could see me talking. The chrome add-on makes it very user friendly.
I know everyone and their mother is familiar with Zoom because of this pandemic, but I’m not! My county favors all things Google, and so Zoom is foreign to me. I’ve used it a bit in this program. I like that you can manually adjust closed captioning. I know there’s an automatic feature, but sometimes those captions are way off. Going back and captioning videos is important for all to be able to access information. You can also share your screen and record. In that way, it reminds me of Loom.
Wideo has a whole education section that has some interesting ideas. Many of their education templates are for pro members. It is easy to start a new video and include a background and music. They have a wide variety of graphics to use, and you can also insert your own images. I had a hard time figuring out how to edit text, but with some patience I got it done. I can imagine using this to make a book trailer or featuring something new in the school library.
I chose to use Kapwing to make a book trailer because it seemed to make more sense to me than Wideo. It has a ton of easy to use features. The editing tool at the bottom makes it easy to play with when you want text or images to appear. I had to look elsewhere to find an audio track, but I found one that I think works by searching royalty free music. It is easy to edit each scene and configure the timing. For the free version of the site, you do get many features. Overall, I can see myself using Kapwing in the library, or suggesting it as an option for students to make their own videos.
Link to video: https://kapwi.ng/c/zsGlGjCP
Reference:
Tissot, B. (2021). Piano moment. Bensound. https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/piano-moment
Zoom is also foreign to me for the most part. My school district used Google Meet this school year and Zoom seems to have so many bells and whistles in comparison. I did not use Loom this past school year, but I like the way the videos turn out and I think that I may give it a try next school year on the days when I may need pre-recorded video instruction.
I love the book trailer that you made! I also used Kapwing, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the video to open up as nicely as yours with a hyper link, but it seemed that you just copied the link straight from Kapwing, right?
We did not use Zoom either (though apparently we’re switching to it next year). I wasn’t able to get your video to work on the Discussion Board, but it worked here. Very nice. I have read other books about the watch dial factories (Radium Girls), but never heard of this one. I’ll have to check it out!