Today, I’m focusing on how to create instructional videos. As I’ve been conducting training sessions in my building and virtually, it occurred to me that I’ve never done an episode on instructional videos. I’m talking about the ones that are pre-recorded and will be used for direct instruction or lectures or to walk students step-by-step through an activity or app. The very videos we need right now!
In this episode, I’m also going to talk with one of the teachers in my district, Corinne Miller, about how she is approaching instructional videos and how to film them. So let’s jump in!
The key to successful instructional videos is to remember that your videos should be no longer than 10 minutes; any longer and students will disengage. If you need more than 10 minutes, create two shorter videos that can be broken up and watched at different times.
PRE-PRODUCTION PHASE
Just like any Hollywood blockbuster, we’re entering the pre-production phase. This is where you will plan out what concepts you will cover, storyboard, and create slide presentations or gather your physical manipulatives. The more planned out you are in this stage, the better and more effective your final result will be.
First, look at your standards and decide what are the important points you need to cover. Unfortunately, you can’t cover as much with remote learning as you can with face-to-face learning, so you need to look at what is essential for your students to know.
Next, storyboard and/or script out your video. You could use a storyboard template like one of these, write a whole script or simply create talking points for yourself to go over. Items you will want to consider include:
- How will you open your video and hook your students?
- What essential points will you make?
- Will you share your screen and walk students through a website or activity?
Depending on your video, you may or may not need to do this. You may be just doing direct instruction. But if you are walking students through an activity or how to use an app, make sure to be clear and concise in your instructions and what your expectations are for the activity and what you want students to do. You may want to do this in a second video breaking up the lecture from the activity instructions. You will certainly want to do a separate video if you are using a tool or app that is new to students, modeling exactly what students need to do and allow them time to play with the tool before turning in a graded assignment. I’ll model what I’m talking about in the next phase.
PRODUCTION AND FILMING
So once you’ve planned out how your video will go, it’s time for the production and filming phase. This is where you will film your instructional video. Now, I want to give you some tips before you film.
If you are filming in a seated position, like sitting at a desk, I recommend using either a laptop with a web camera or a phone on a small tripod set in the horizontal position. With your laptop, you may also want an external microphone. The current laptop that I have has a great internal mic and picks up my speaking voice very easily, but the laptop I used to have always had a buzzing sound when I recorded and so I used an external microphone, plugged into my laptop. It could be a simple one like this (holds up mic) or a more robust microphone like the ones pictured here. Definitely do some test runs with your laptop and see if you get any kind of feedback using your internal mic first. Then decide if you need an external one. And note, I am not advocating that you go out and buy an expensive microphone! If you feel you absolutely need an external mic, there are plenty of inexpensive ones available. I’ll link to suggestions in the episode notes.
If you are filming from a standing position or are lucky enough to film from your classroom and will be demonstrating concepts on a board; whiteboard, interactive board, whatever your school may have, I recommend using either your phone or a video camera, or even an iPod Touch that has a camera. No matter which of these three you choose, I would set it up on a tripod. This way the camera won’t move and you can set it to the right height, which should be parallel to your face. You could use a laptop if absolutely necessary, but remember it needs to be sitting somewhere pretty high to capture your face and upper body because you don’t want to look like a floating head either!
You will also want to consider your lighting when recording. Most classrooms should have good enough lighting; it will probably be at home that you want to find a good spot in a well-lit room, facing towards the windows. You don’t want light coming into through a window behind you, because it will create a halo effect and be tough for viewers to see you. I’ll add more recording and lighting resources in the episode notes.
Then it’s time to record! The biggest piece of advice I can give you when recording is don’t stop recording when you make a mistake! Stop yourself, take a breath and start your last thought or sentence again. But keep recording! You can fix most mistakes in editing. But if you’re like me, I don’t have anyone helping me when I film, so when I’m recording, if I make a really major mistake I have to stop and then go over to my camera, stop recording and then start recording again and come back over to the place that I’m standing and I’m never standing in the same spot that I was when I was filming just a moment ago. The more you move in and out of the camera view between takes, the harder it will be when you go into editing, it looks like you’ve jumped around, and secondly, at least for me, the more times I start and stop, the more pressure I put on myself to make it perfect. It’s not ever going to be perfect and if you make a mistake, it shows your students you’re human and you can shake it off and keep going.
Also, and this is hard, when you make a mistake where you have to start over again, take a couple of moments to not move before starting again, because you give yourself space in editing to cut the clip and piece clips together without it being too choppy. Do the same thing when you’re done filming and say your goodbye or conclusion. Stay in that same position for an extra few seconds before walking off camera. It will save you a lot of frustration later!
So if you’re just filming direct instruction, this process will be fairly easy. Just record yourself talking or demonstrating on the board or doing a lab. It becomes a little more complicated when you add screen recording. So let me model this for you.
Let’s say, I’m creating an instructional video and introducing Pear Deck to my audience for the first time. I’ll open up any applications I need first and set up my screen including my screen recording program, which is WeVideo. In WeVideo, I will want to set the program to record both my screen and my web camera, so that while I’m explaining Pear Deck and showing my audience where they need to go, they can still see my face and connect with me. Then I’ll start recording and go through the app step-by-step just like this:
Hi everyone, I’m going to show you how to create a lesson using a Pear Deck template. First, open Google Slides. If you don’t know how to do this, go to slides.google.com. Once it has opened, click on “Add-Ons” and select “Pear Deck” and “Open Pear Deck add-on”. Then a new window will appear on the right side of the screen.
We need to use a template, so click on “Template Library”. There are lots of templates to choose from, so make sure to explore each category on your own. I’m going to choose a template from “Critical Thinking”. So you will find a template you want to add to your presentation and then click on that slide to add it. Click in the text box if you want to change the typed instructions and write your own. When you are ready to present to a class, click on “start lesson” from the Pear Deck window and select “Instructor Paced Activity”.
In this recording, I went clearly through each step on the screen, making sure to say what I was doing as I was doing it. This will take a little practice on your part and you will probably have to go a little slower than you normally would, so that students can clearly see what it is you are clicking on. Now, in WeVideo, my screen recording and the recording of my web camera come into the media area as two separate files, which I think is a nice feature, because you can decide when editing your video, if you want to talk for a minute to students without showing anything else on the screen, or show just your screen or both. I have also noticed that sometimes instead of the two files dropping into this media area, it adds it to the two video tracks for me and automatically makes the view with my web camera smaller. But for some reason it doesn’t always do that. So I’ll show how to fix that in a minute.
You’ll also notice that I zoomed in on certain areas and highlighted what I was clicking on. I’ll show you how to do these things in the next phase, post-production and editing.
POST-PRODUCTION AND EDITING
In this phase, you are editing your instructional video, making cuts, if needed and adding text, graphics, music, and transitions and distributing the final product to viewers. Again, I’m using WeVideo to edit my video, but all editing software looks and acts very similar to each other so what I’m about to show you should look similar even if you’re using different software.
If you only recorded yourself talking, editing is pretty easy. If you used a video camera or phone you will need to transfer the footage to your laptop and upload it to the editing software of your choice. In WeVideo, you can add your recorded footage and any images or other external files in the same way. Click on “My Media” and then “Import”. Search where the saved files are and upload. If you are uploading several files, hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard and select all of the files. Once they’re uploaded, they’ll sit in this media area.
Click and drag the element you want to add to any of the video tracks. If you are adding music, that will need to be placed on an audio track. Now, you’ll notice there are two video tracks. It doesn’t matter which track elements are placed on, except for this one thing: if I want to layer elements, the element I want in the background would be placed on the lower track, video track one and the element I want in the foreground would be placed on the higher track, video track 2, like I’ve done with this title playing on top of my video.
To show you how to edit video footage, let’s go back and use the Pear Deck model I showed you earlier. I want to add a title first because if I wait, I will end up having to move all my footage to make space for it, and if I have several small clips from editing first, it’s very annoying to try and move them later. Click on the “text” tab and select a title and drag it to the track. Double click on the title to edit the text and change colors. Next, add the video footage to a track and then cut any mistakes or extra areas of silence. I can do this by selecting the clip, using the playhead, that’s this blue thing, and drag it along my clip to find the beginning part I want to cut out and click the scissors on my playhead. Then find the end part I want to cut out, and click the scissors again. Now, I’ve isolated the part I want to cut and can select it and hit delete on my keyboard or click the trash can right above the clip. Then I need to move the next piece of clip over to meet this other clip, otherwise it will leave a gap. It will also help to zoom in on the timeline to see the clips easier and make sure I’m placing them without leaving a gap.
To zoom in on parts of my filmed footage, I double click on the clip and select the transform tab. Use the scale slider to zoom in or out on your clip. You may also need to physically move the clip in the preview window to find the right place you want to zoom in on. Once set, click “save changes”. If you want to highlight a button or a link that you’ve clicked on, find that area in your clip and zoom in, then click on “text” and select “callouts”. This is where the layers come in. I want to drag the rectangle to the spot above the footage I want to highlight. I’ll double click the rectangle and physically move it to the location I want to highlight. Then I’ll resize it and I like to change the stroke or the thickness of the lines to be thinner and change the color to yellow. You can change it or leave it alone, it’s really up to you.
I also used my web camera. Since this recorded separately from the screen recording, I can shrink the view from the web camera using the scale slider again to fit it in the corner of the overall video.
The last thing I want to do is add transitions. I do this to break up my videos into different sections or to fix mistakes! Sometimes in editing my videos, I don’t always give myself time on the filming side and to fix the choppiness, I drag a transition in between two clips.
Once I’m finished with editing, it’s time to distribute the finished product. Click the finish button and, decide the resolution, remember lower resolutions will work well for students with low internet connectivity, and decide where the video will be saved. I always keep a backup on Google Drive, but I want my videos to be viewed on YouTube, so I need to select that too. When it’s finished processing on YouTube, it will stay private until you change the setting. To learn more about editing in WeVideo and how to use YouTube, check out the two playlists on my YouTube channel.
I’m so excited to share my conversation with one of the teachers I used to work with when I was at our middle school, Corinne Miller. Corinne and I share a background in journalism and when I was prepping for this episode noticed a tweet where she was looking at equipment for filming videos and invited her to come talk with me about it.
Corinne, thank you so much again for taking time on your vacation, no less, to talk with me and share your thoughts!
And that wraps up another episode! All of the resources mentioned in today’s episode will be available in the episode notes on Wakelet.
What are your plans for creating instructional videos? Is there something you are anxious or nervous about? Share in the comments below!
Ms Priester EDU 