I have been experimenting with different platforms online to make instructional videos for my classes. I was worried that making videos would take too much time, but it's really not too bad!
Videos are a great way to get students to remember your instructional content. Every year, I make hundreds of copies of my disclosure document as required and students/parents are supposed to read the document and sign a contract at the end. People don't read those things. I hate to admit it, but when my own children bring me piles of documents to sign at the beginning of the year I just sign them. Maybe I'll skim a little if I have time. That doesn't mean disclosure documents aren't important...I tried to cut my 6 page document down to make it more reader-friendly and I couldn't find anything to cut! The problem is, students and parents do not always get the important messages/information from that document.
I recommend making instructional videos for parents and students to help them learn the important aspects of your program and how you run your classroom. Here are some great FREE online tools you can use to create videos:
ADOBE SPARK
Adobe Spark has some great templates for making short videos. You can't customize the video very much, but you will end up with a professional result. Adobe has great short tutorials to help you quickly learn how to put your video together. FREE!
ANIMAKER
I really enjoyed using Animaker. I had to watch the first 5 minutes or so of a 'how-to' video tutorial to understand how to make my video, but it was pretty easy once I learned to navigate the interface on the site. You can customize a lot of things in Animaker. That means, it might take longer to make the video, but you can make the video look exactly how you'd like it to look. Animaker has lots of great stock videos and images to use in your videos. Some require a premium subscription to the site, but I was able to find what I needed from their free options. You do have to go through a process to get your video published once you are finished. They had me fill out a google form to notify them of the uses for my video. Animaker then emailed me a link to my published video.
Here's my first Animaker video about HOW TO PURCHASE/RENT A STRING INSTRUMENT:
BITEABLE
After using Animaker, Biteable seems very simple. I didn't have to watch a tutorial to use the site, as it seemed very intuitive. They have a ton of quality images in their library to use in your videos. You can't customize a Biteable video as much as Animaker, but that makes the video-creating process to go faster. Once to complete a video, you can quickly and easily download it directly to YouTube. I whipped up this video about ORCHESTRA PROTOCOLS in about an hour:
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