Tech Tip #1




During Covid a lot of things changed overnight for teachers.  We were thrust into the world of online teaching whether we wanted to be there or not.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not a natural techie, so this sudden reliance on technology to do my job was huge learning curve.  I learned A LOT in the past couple of years about incorporating tech into my lessons and there a couple of tools that have definitely found a permanent place in my post-Covid classroom.  

I use YouTube a lot in my classroom.  I love to start lessons with a short 3-5 minute video hook/song, I use longer clips to help with building background knowledge; and I use videos for classroom meditation, or brain breaks.  Naturally there are times when I need to share these videos via Google Classroom for homework/home support work, but there are other times when my students just really love a song or video and request that I share the link in our Google Classroom.  However, I was always nervous when linking videos there, as I had no control over what ads popped up, or what suggested videos were displayed alongside the desired video when students clicked at home.  

Last year I took an online course on Educational Trends and one of the tools presented in the course was SafeShare (https://safeshare.tv).  This was a new online resource for me, and one that I started using right away.  Like the name says, this web tool allows you to share a video URL safely by reducing all the ads, annotations, or links- essentially all potentially inappropriate material that may pop up when students open a video link is eliminated.  The only content that opens/is displayed when using SafeShare, is the video link you actually want.  SafeShare even allows you to edit the video title if you want to make it something more appropriate/relevant to your students.  Its super quick and its free, you simply copy/paste the video link you want into the SafeShare site and it will generate a link that can then be pasted into your Google Classroom, or anywhere else that you share video content directly to students. 

The second YouTube tool that I learned about in the Educational Trends course was a site called VideoAnt (https://ant.umn.edu).  This one took a little experimenting for me to be able to use it to its full potential, but I am so glad I stuck with it.  This was a game changer for me during Covid when we were remote teaching, and even though my students are now back in the classroom, I am still using it! In a nutshell VideoAnt is a free web-based video annotation tool which allows you to add questions or comments which will show up at key points of a video.  It has turned YouTube videos into a much less passive form of learning for my students.  Using VideoAnt with my YouTube clips requires students to actively participate when viewing and it allows me to assess whether they are really getting something out of the video or not. To use the program you simply paste the URL of a YouTube video into the website, play the video and when there is a spot you want to insert a question, click ‘add’, type your question, and then when students watch the video the questions will be displayed on the right-hand side of their screen.  You can save your link and share the annotated video in your Google Classroom or wherever you share content for your class. 

I'll share the links again here at the bottom of this post for your reference.  What tech tips did you pick up during remote teaching that you will continue to use now that we are (mostly) back to in-person learning?

Links : SafeShare https://safeshare.tv  | VideoAnt https://ant.umn.edu

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