Activity 2 - Getting your students to make short videos.

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See a video description of the tip here.

 

This tip is almost obvious, but obvious things are also worth reminding of. The tip is simply to encourage your students to talk into cameras sometimes and send you short videos.

 

We have our own 2-minute challenges (you can read about those here) and I hope some of your students can take part in that. The advantage of these is that there is nothing for you to prepare, all of the explaining is done by us, and the videos will be published (safely) in a public forum, which adds an extra edge to the activity.

 

But beyond that you can get students to send you videos challenges that you set them, or even sometimes homework tasks. Instead of always writing, they can tell you about E.g. 6 things they have done recently.

 

Advantages are -

 

Your students practice online presentation skills, including how to talk into a camera (carefully - not just zoom session), which will become more important in coming years for job applications, etc..

 

If you choose to share some of the videos with the class, the class get to see eachother again for slightly extended periods.

 

You can create your own class channel on youtube where students can tune in to see their classmates whenever they want. 

 

You yourself get to see your students for an extended period, longer than you would in a zoom class, which can give you some better idea of how they are.

 

Disadvantages are - 

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It is important to emphasise that the quality of the video is not important at all, but it can still be a factor when some videos come in high quality and somebody else can hardly find a quiet moment in the house. Also some people will feel self-conscious generally knowing that their film does not look good. I think it is best if all videos go through the teacher to decide what to do with them next.

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Here are some simple tips to give your students about filming.

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• Be quite close to the camera so that we can see your face.

• Speak slowly and loudly so that we can hear you.

• Put the phone or laptop on a chair or table so it is not moving around.

• Try not to have a light source (a window or a lamp) behind you in the video. 

• Really really don't worry about anything, including background noises from the family or how you look on video. 

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