Month: February 2016
A beginner’s guide to teaching online, part 1: which platform to use?
25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently
English Pronunciation – “The Chaos” by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité. Really funny
If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world
Guides to Making Instructional Videos
Things to keep in mind while making videos
Making Videos
Here are some things to keep in mind when planning your video. First, think visually. Don’t put any more text on the screen than is necessary. Remember some students may watch the videos on their phones. Use quality images to illustrate. Make the video content as accessible as you can keeping in mind size and contrast.
Other suggestions include
- have a script,
- keep it close to six minutes or less,
- focus on one or two points,
- make your audio hiqh quality, and
- make it interactive.
Some options to think of are
- do you include yourself in the video?
- do you want to provide captions? (If not, is the video understandable without captions?)
- are you going to include music?
Curating Videos
For curating videos, the concerns are similar, they include
- length of the video,
- production values (contrast, image quality, and sound quality),
- clear and limited focus,
- clarity of presentation and use of captions,
- and interactivity.
Also, with curating, we need to add a couple of other concerns including
- accuracy of the content and
- appropriateness for our students.
Finally, make sure you watch all of the video. Sometimes, there may be an error late in the video. Curating for common topics in grammar is much easier than curating for uncommon topics that our curriculum may call for. If you are looking for videos, this sitehas numerous links for searching for educational videos.