You're planning on doing some video recording: lectures, answer keys to assignments, demonstrations of how to use a software title, showing how to calculate compounding interest, introducing yourself as the instructor, and maybe a quick video tour of your class website. What are the hardware and software tools you should use?
I'm going to very superficially describe my workflows; the goal of this post is to give you ideas of technologies that exist and what they are designed to do – to point you in the right direction for additional information. I opted not to provide exhaustive details here mainly because technology is always changing, for example:
- which software titles are available on which operating systems
- the costs of various software titles and different account types you can register for
- whether your institution has a site license or discount for software
Over the last five years, I've settled on a set of software/apps that I use for recording specific types of videos. I use Apple hardware (MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone) for recording, but if you're not an Apple user, that's OK - more than half of the software I use is device-independent. Most, if not all, work on Windows and Android as well.
One set of video tools that will be missing here are professional-level video editing tools like Final Cut Pro (Apple) and titles from the Adobe Creative Suite.
Zoom
Primary use: videoconferencing
Video recording use: meetings, shared whiteboard, shared screens and annotations
Pros: available on all common device operating systems, user friendly design
Cons: I'm having a hard time thinking of one, which is probably why it is at the top of the list
Workflow details and resources:
- How to record in Zoom walkthrough video by me (video components created and recorded in Zoom and using QuickTime Player; video assembled using Clips).
- For those who find it awkward to use a mouse or trackpad to draw annotations, and who have a tablet they'd like to use for that purpose, here's a great approach: walkthrough video by me (recorded using Zoom). The brief written version of the approach is,
Host the Zoom meeting on your desktop or laptop computer, and then also join your Zoom meeting from your tablet. Make your tablet a meeting co-host, and then while you're performing administrative host functions on your desktop/laptop (e.g. monitoring the chat, recording the meeting), you can share a whiteboard from the tablet, and then draw with your finger or stylus on the tablet to make your annotations.
Zoom is an incredibly versatile tool that works on all platforms, and many institutions have licenses for their instructors. Zoom uses the device's built-in camera to record video (and microphone for audio). I like to record Zoom meetings and post them for people who were unable to attend. Meetings can include users sharing their screens to the entire class, and the ability for everybody to draw on (annotate) those shared screens. A user can also share a blank screen (whiteboard) for group annotation as well.
As an instructor, I have also used Zoom to create video messages from me to the class. This could just as easily be accomplished on a mobile device by using its camera to make a video recording.
Zoom's strength is recording live video from the camera, but not as much for creating screencast videos, defined as students viewing your "slides" (PowerPoint or Keynote or Google Slides files, for example) and how you interact with those slides, like using a LASER pointer tool, or annotating or editing.
For screencasting, there are a host of options! Three that are very popular are:
but, I have never used any of these, because I was first introduced to (and never left)…
ExplainEverything
Primary use: screencasting
Example video: Genetics Exam Key
Video recording use: recording your voice (audio) and video of your device display, including your annotations
Pros: natively imports PDF and PowerPoint files as individual slides, has some basic built-in editing functions, allows "live" addition of graphics and other file types and of web browser windows during a presentation
Cons: doesn't (yet) support adding a thumbnail video of the instructor's face in recordings
Workflow details and resources:
- My blog post on how I use ExplainEverything to record presentations
- My blog post on how to share an ExplainEverything presentation on a tablet/smartphone in a Zoom meeting
- My unfortunately long walkthrough video on how to perform basic animations in an ExplainEverything presentation (video content was created in ExplainEverything and recorded using QuickTime Player; the video components were assembled using Clips)
I use ExplainEverything to record face-to-face class meetings, where my tablet is connected (usually wirelessly) to a projector, so that the entire class sees what is on my tablet screen - and that is a set of PowerPoint slides that form the basis of the lecture. ExplainEverything has a built-in recording feature, so after I import whatever files I want to project, I press the "Record" button and start talking and navigating through the different slides (pages) of the imported file. ExplainEverything has a robust set of annotation tools (pens of variable width and color, highlighters, a LASER pointer tool, and others) that let me "mark up" each projected slide. The slide navigation and annotations are all recorded as a video file, along with the audio.
I also use ExplainEverything outside of class especially to produce lecture videos for asynchronous instruction and to produce assignment key recordings. For the latter, I import the file containing the assignment, and then I write/draw out answers to the questions while orally describing the thought process behind how I arrived at the correct answer.
Clips
Primary use: creating "social media" style informal video messages
Example video: Advertisement for students to enroll in my genetics class
Video recording use: quick walkthroughs and "trailer" videos that introduce a topic
Pros: live captioning, allows live photo or video capture as well as photos and videos from the camera roll, numerous built-in graphical features for annotations, as well as background soundtracks
Cons: iOS only, editing the live caption text is tedious
Workflow details and resources:
- My Clips creation workflow video (primary images and video were screenshots and from QuickTime Player; the video was assembled using Clips)
- My blog post with a longer description of pros and cons, live captioning, and the concept of course trailer videos
Clips is a free and Apple-only video production app that is essentially the older (more mature?) sibling of TikTok, as far as I can tell. Its function is to quickly produce short videos that can contain some simple graphical additions. This is not a screencasting app - it doesn't allow manual/freehand annotation.
The overwhelmingly cool thing about Clips is that it was the first publicly available app with "live captioning." As the user speaks while recording a video in Clips, the audio is automatically transcribed into text that appears (if you want) on the screen as a caption.
I mainly use Clips to produce quick "trailer" videos. Although I forgot to mention these in yesterday's post, course trailers are my version of movie trailers: you know, the quick TV commercial-length teasers that introduce the story, show a few scenes that grab your attention and leave you wanting more…and then it is over. For one of my courses, I have made a trailer video for each class meeting. Students watch the trailer video before coming to class. They hear about what the topic of the day is, and I incorporate what I hope is a "hook" to get them interested in the topic. In my case, I often pose this as a question, like (for genetics): "Why is it that some siblings don't look more similar to each other than others?"
Lecture Videos
Primary use: creating lecture videos where viewers see the "white board" and the instructor's face (not back) at the same time
Example video: Ancestry Testing
Pros: cool-looking and engaging
Cons: proprietary hardware required
Several years ago, groups at two different universities practically simultaneously invented a method for a presenter to draw on a vertical piece of glass with fluorescent markers while being videotaped through the glass so that the viewer sees the instructors front side (face) and the board contents at the same time.
The two technologies are called Lightboard and Learning Glass. They're great for producing engaging lecture-style videos. If you have one of these at your school, I highly recommend taking advantage of it. This is my go-to solution for producing lecture videos for asynchronous use.
QuickTime Player
Primary use: screen capture of a computer screen
Example video: Ancestry Data Analysis (Microsoft Excel screen capture starts at about 17 seconds)
Pros: very easy to use
Cons: macOS only
Apple users probably know of QuickTime Player as the default video-watching app for files like .mov and .mp4. They might not know that, in the File menu, the "New Screen Recording" option allows you to record a part of your screen or your entire screen while you otherwise use your computer as normal. I use this for creating software walkthrough tutorials, like how to enter functions and perform calculations in Microsoft Excel or how to navigate YouTube to locate and edit the text of video captions.
After videos are created, they need to be shared with others, and for educational purposes they definitely need to be accessible (meaning they need to have captions). Tomorrow, I'll address these topics.
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