Creating Unique Video Lessons

We all know there are a ton of sites out there that provide videos. It is one thing to provide students with a link to a video, acting as passive receptacles of information. It is another thing to engage the viewer with the content being shared, providing thought-provoking questions and pushing for a deeper level of understand. In this post I would like to present two powerful video lesson creation tools that you can use to begin flipping your classroom.

EdPuzzle


I've seen a few online video editing sites in my career (Popcorn Maker being the first), and I feel this one really takes the cake. EdPuzzle is a free service that allows you to add your voice and questions to educational videos. You can search for educational videos from Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, YouTube, National Geographic, TED, Veritasium, Numberphile and Crash Course. Once you've inserted a video you can add your own voice comments. You can also insert formative assessments anytime during the video and check your students' understanding. Questions are inserted along a timeline that pauses the video and allows students to answer.

Assign Videos


There are a few options to dispersing your video to students. Once the video is completed you can share a direct link to the video or share to Facebook and Twitter. However, these options will not allow the user to complete the questions you have assigned to the video. You can also opt to have students create an account and watch the videos through their account. This option may prove to be the most beneficial. You can assign videos to one or more students, as well as track analytic data on how much of the video they watched and which questions they answered. Account creation is easy and can be completed in a few steps.

 TED Ed

TED-Ed seeks to define what flipping the classroom is all about. This service has been out for what seems a few years, and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it until recently. The concept: find a video explaining a topic and flip it by adding questions, providing links to further concept(s), and promoting discussions all in one nice little package. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. They even created a video personifying TED-Ed.

Features

The features explored include the ability to add multiple choice questions, open answer questions, "dig deeper" materials, and custom discussion topics to any video on YouTube. Like EdPuzzle you can have students create an account and engage in your videos, collecting data on how students are engaging with the activity.

While the TED Ed service is incredibly helpful for educators and learners all around the world, I do have one qualm: YouTube. Obviously there are a ton of videos being posted every day on YouTube, but there are other sites on the web that produce educational videos. Either way, if you're looking to create your own flipped classroom, or want to borrow content from other educators, these two resources might just be the ticket.