Hello again teachers! How does that online classroom of yours look? Is it coming together? How excited are you for the start of the year? I bet most of you are saying not excited AT ALL. Especially if you are teaching virtually. Most teachers I’ve spoken with say that they hate it. And I understand. That’s exactly why I record this podcast for you each and every week. Because I want to help you find some of the joy in online teaching. I want you to rediscover your love for teaching again. I want you to have time to be the humans you are. We all have families, hobbies, passions and so much more outside of teaching; and I want you to have the time and energy to enjoy these again. Today, we are exploring some tips and tricks for recording your online lessons. While most lessons are now in person online, or viewed asynchronously, there are still many reasons a you as a teacher may want your lessons recorded ahead of time. Some students simply don’t have the bandwidth to join a live lesson. Some students have to miss class, just like in person. Other students are sharing technology and will need to catch your lesson at a later time. Maybe you’re recording your lessons so you can remember what you said, or to help hold your students accountable. Whatever your reason, my mission today is to help your recording sessions go a little bit smoother.
How many of you have recorded any sort of video that you intend to edit? How was your experience? Did it make you want to pull your hair out? Did it take hours upon hours? How awful did it feel when you realized you had to do this over, and over again? That’s why I’m here to give you tips to make your recording session go as smoothly as possible. I’m currently recording video tutorials for all of you, so I’m elbows deep in recording and editing. What better time to teach you how to edit than when I’m doing it myself?! So, buckle up, because you don’t want to miss this.
My first teacher tip for successfully recording an online lesson is to follow the wise words of Dory. Just keep swimming…or as I tell myself, just keep recording. Don’t start over and over again in an attempt for perfection. Are your in person lessons perfect? No! You stumble over words, write the wrong numbers, spell incorrectly, get interrupted and so much more during any given in classroom lesson. Why do you think your students will expect anything different online? I’m willing to bet your students and their families love you, and understand the enormous undertaking you are navigating, and will forgive any minor mishaps. If there’s anything you absolutely want edited out, like a curse word, the dogs barking, the doorbell ringing, or whatever else can go wrong, have no fear! This is actually easier to fix than you think. Instead of pausing the recording, or starting over, just keep recording. In my experience, it’s so much easier to delete frames from one clip instead of trying to splice completely different clips together, or aiming for perfection. No matter what, don’t stop. Nobody will hear your conversation with the salesman who just rang the doorbell, or watch you solve that math problem incorrectly in the final product. And, while we’re at it, if you want to fix individual sentences, take a quick breath. When I correct myself, I have a tendency to do it quickly, even though I know I will be deleting the previous sentence. However, I encourage you to take a breath and start over at the beginning of the sentence. This will make your editing job easier. If you correct yourself too quickly, it can be difficult to cut, or trim, your recording without cutting off the first beat of your sentence. Now, it doesn’t make THAT big of a difference, but it can be noticeable.
Ready for the next tip? This seems obvious, but its worth mentioning. Why? Because I’m guilty of it as well. Before you hit record, it’s a good idea to have a general outline or an idea of what you’re going to say. I’m not saying you need to script the entire lesson, because we’re trying to save time here, and that would be the complete opposite. I’m more specifically talking about examples you want to give, how you want to deliver your lesson. Have everything pulled up and ready to go, just like you would inside the classroom. Every little time you can avoid stopping or pausing too long is time saved in the editing phase. Remember when I’ve said I’m guilty? This podcast is scripted, so If I don’t script it out ahead of time, I’m all over the place. But, with he video tutorials I am creating for all of you, I learned, or remembered, the hard way. When I just sit down and press record, my video is a hot mess. I’m all over the place. I’m not clear and I make mistakes. Things don’t go as planned. It’s SO much more worth it to spend the extra few minutes making a general game plan ahead of time because it translates to less time spent in the long run.
Another one of my favorite options? I’ve mentioned this tool before and I’m about to mention it again – you can record in Canva! In Canva you can create just about every resource under the sun, including PowerPoint like slides and lessons. As you present these lessons, you can also record within the website. What I really like about it? You can easily show your face, or turn it off so the students can focus completely on the video. I love that you have the option of popping in exactly when they need you, and turning of your face when you’re not as needed. It also helps spice up the monotony of video. This is quick and easy to do within the software. If you’re presenting just a PowerPoint, but want to level it up more than just posting the slides themselves, this is something I highly recommend.
Now, I can’t walk you through exactly how you will edit your video, because every editing software is diffferent, but I can tell you some of the different verbiage you will see and what it means. Let’s focus on the two main and most important, in my opinion, ones you will see. They are trim and split. I really love these because they minimize work and polish the final result. With trim, you will be able to slide the beginning and end of the clip to the exact starting or ending point you want. For example, you push record, but you have to get settled in the frame. You don’t want your students to see you walking back to your spot, you don’t want them to see you do that list minute hair adjustment. What you do want is your students to see the exact moment you say hello. That’s where the trim feature comes into play. Same thing on the end! Want to say goodbye, but want to edit out you pressing the stop button? Easy peasy with trim.
Next things next, let’s talk split. Split, or cut, or something to that effect, will be the tool you use to pull out clips you don’t want. For example, let’s say you solved that math equation incorrectly – no shame – we’ve all been there! You will press cut, split, whatever, at the moment you want to start deleting. Let your video play until you see the end of the mistake, is this case, the moment you realized you solved the problem wrong and reset. You will press the same split button to completely separate that section from your clip. When you are ready, select that clip in your timeline, and click delete! At this point it should be gone and your video should be picking up right at the beginning of that math problem again, only this time you’re solving it correctly.
Another editing tip to save you time, most video editing softwares, if not all, have the option to speed up your playback. The point of this is to speed up your editing time even further. You will be moving and speaking faster, so make sure you are ready for the extra speed. I don’t recommend this the first few times you edit a video. I highly recommend getting your feet underneath you before you try to speed things up. And while we’re talking about it, keep at it with the video editing. It can be quite the skill to learn, but please, give yourself time to thoroughly learn it. Your first few videos wil likely take more time than you want, and more time than it will take after you’ve been editing for a month. It is completely worth it – just keep going.
Ok teachers, with that short and sweet episode, that is it for this week! Once you choose your recording software, I recommend heading to YouTube and watching tutorials for your specific editing software. Most likely, your computer will come with an editing software already installed, but it probably only does bare bones. Which, can be more than enough! For example, I edit my videos with iMovie, which came with my computer. It doesn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles, but it’s perfect for what I need and doesn’t hinder my ability to teach my lesson or get my points across. What video will you start out with? I hope this video has given you some confidence to record and edit your first video, or to try again if it burned you last year. Good luck, teacher friends. See you next week!
