Video Apps for Instruction

Using online videos for instruction can be a good way to disseminate information, but students are often not actively engaged while watching the videos.

Both Zaption and Educanon offer a way to keep students engaged while they watch short videos.  You can add questions and slides and even crop the videos.  Once students have completed the activities, you can view the results.

Zaption seems to be easier to use, but Educanon can be used from within Edmodo.

Here are videos I created on each site.

Snow Day!!

All teachers and students hope for a snow day, right?  Well, in Virginia Beach, we have to make up every minute we miss because of inclement weather.  (We also sometimes miss because of floods from tropical systems and Nor'Easters.)  Today we had a snow day, so I thought I'd just post a video for fun.
I made this video using a movie trailer theme in iMovie 11.  Oh that we had Macs in Virginia Beach!  This clearly can be made on that other OS, but Macs are just so cool and so user friendly.
I always think of creating a video as being very similar to writing an essay.  So even though this was just for fun, it could be used as an assignment.  I can think of many ideas.  What ideas do you have?
Enjoy my snow day.  I'll be making it up during Easter break most likely.

Creating Videos Online

Check out this blog post at Free Technology for Teachers. (And add that blog to your RSS reader if you haven't already--lots of great free ideas for teachers.)

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/11/six-easy-ways-for-students-to-create.html

This post explains six ways for students to create videos online. I have already told you about a couple of them, but Mr. Byrne has more.

Creating online is so much easier than using a program such as Windows Movie Maker or Photostory because we don't have to be concerned about where the files will be saved, or if the students save all the files in the same folder, and so on and so on.

Especially now that we have the issues with student rights and jump drives, online work is just a lot more sensible.