Recently, teachers and professors have been required to temporarily transfer their in-person classrooms and lessons to a distance learning model. So what do we do?

Well, we have to create content, obviously. A lot of teachers have chosen to host class time via Zoom, Google Meet or Google Hangouts, among other video chatting platforms. This is an excellent way to meet with the students and assist them with assignments. It’s also a great way to check in with them and make sure that they are doing okay at this time. However, some kids just can’t make the meeting times. There are so many reasons for this. Some examples are that their parents are working from home and they have to help their younger siblings with their schoolwork, or they may have to share devices with parents and siblings, or they might not be able to pay for their wifi or mobile carrier services because their parents were laid off. We need to have something else in place for our students to access our course content and materials.

I wholeheartedly suggest creating videos and posting them on your Google Classroom or other LMS (Learning Management System) . There are a few ways to do this effectively. I will explain a few of these here and I will share some tricks and tools that I’ve gained through my dabbles in indie filmmaking.

6 Ways to Improve Your Video Lessons

1. Be concise. Ask yourself, “what is the most important thing I want the students to know?” Start with that and then decide what you need to include to support that essential question. Try to keep your videos less than 7 minutes long.
2. Plan your video ahead of time. Take a few minutes to outline what you are going to talk about. I personally write a script for myself. I know it sounds a little extra (it is), but it helps me since I really don’t like being in front of the camera.
3. Choose the right location. This one sounds a little weird, but you’re asking your students to sit there and watch you talk at them for several minutes. Do them a favor and choose a spot in your house with interesting things to look at and at the very least some good lighting, which brings me to the next point…
4. Make sure that you have good lighting. Natural light is best, so try filming by a window. If that isn’t enough to give you a pleasant image, then add a lamp or two, open your windows as widely as possible, and do whatever else you need to do to give yourself adequate light.
5. Have the best sound that you can. I know that a lot of you don’t have access to microphones at home, but on the off chance you do, use them! Good sound is the most important thing. People will put up with crappy video to a certain extent, but bad sound? Never. If you don’t have a mic, no worries! Just plug your earbuds in and use the built in mic that they have. It will sound so much nicer than relying on the tiny microphone on your ipad, phone, or laptop. Trust me! See this post for more technical help and recommendations on how to improve your videos through lighting and sound.
6. Post your video on a site like YouTube or Vimeo. Then, share the link on your LMS. It’s very glitchy to try and upload a video directly to Google Classroom. Consider hosting your video on YouTube or Vimeo as a private link and then copying the link to post on our LMS. To avoid shenanigans, disable the comments on your video. Stay tuned for help with post production, editing, and with uploading your videos.

Class dismissed!