Video Creation: Teaching the Mechanics
Students will need to learn some basic technology skills for creating, uploading, and sharing videos. Below are quick video tutorials.
You may watch these videos to familiarize yourself with how your students can create and share videos in your class. These videos make no reference to a specific class and enable students to make and share videos for various kinds of assignments. You may include these videos within your own class, making them available to students. Rather than (repeatedly) spend time in class teaching these workflows, a professor can instead point students to short tutorial videos like these, which they can watch (as many times as they need) outside of classtime.
Basic Video Documentary: via PowerPoint
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Screencast-O-Matic (free version)
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This lengthy video tutorial, by Justin Brown, covers iMovie, Mac's complimentary videomaking software.
At places like YouTube, and education-oriented websites you man find tutorials that other people have made (as with the above examples) that can demonstrate to students how to make videos. However, existing tutorials on the web (video or otherwise) may have more or less than your students need for your class, and may not be ideal. As with any assignment, you'll need to consider whether existing resources are appropriate, or something more specific must be made.
Cheap and Free Options for Video
Below are several applications, either desktop- or web-based, that enable you and your students to create videos incorporating static or dynamic content. Some, such as Screencast-O-Matic, just record whatever's on screen, together with a voiceover. These can be used in conjunction with presentation apps such as Prezi or Google Presentations. Others, such as iMovie, enable users to add images, record a narration, and edit all on a video playtrack. Microsoft Powerpoint, widely available for Windows users, simply records narrations and slide timings for a slideshow presentation, and exports the resulting presentation in .mp4 video format.
Your students may know of, or discover, and elect to use other software. That's fine, so long as they complete the objectives of your assignment. What is more, you can make clear to students that part of the assignment is learning how to make a video. With the wealth of tools and tutorials available, it is reasonable that they learn this on their own, rather than insisting you teach them the steps.
 | Ideal for everyday screencast and webcam recording. Free version allows 15 minute videos with a minor watermark. Videos recorded can be sent directly to Screencast-O-Matic's hosting site or YouTube, and allows video file creation for hosting in Google Drive. Videos can record and include screencasts, webcams, or both. Paid version includes editing and scripting tools. |
 | An excellent whiteboarding tool for tablets that records all activity as a screencast. Ideal for discussing maps or images with annotations. |
 | Microsoft PowerPoint, particularly 2013 and 2016, can easily export slideshows with narrations and timings to .MP4 video files. |
QuickTime & iMovie for Mac | Mac computers include excellent tools for webcam and screencast recording and editing. |
Hosting Videos
Includes simple editing tools. Available to Canisius users through their Google Apps account, although not covered by the Google Apps for Education license.
If you wish your students to make their videos widely available to the internet, YouTube is the best option. YouTube is the most popular vehicle for broadcasting video on the internet.
Under a educational fair use protection, if your students are including copyrighted material in an assignment video production, they should not upload to YouTube, as YouTube might disable the video.
This tutorial shows you how to create a YouTube channel as a professor. But the process is basically the same for your students.
Cloud Storage using YouTube player tech. Included in Google Apps for Education. There are several options whereby students can share videos only with the professor, or with each other:
Tutorials for faculty:
The Basics of Google Drive for Faculty & Staff (Start Here!) - Transcript
Managing Student Assignments using Google Drive
Secure Sharing in Classes via Google Drive.
Tutorials available to students:
Simple sharing: upload and share a video or audio file with your professor.
Using Google Drive to Share Videos in D2L Discussions
Access a Folder Your Professor Has Shared With You (For a Class)
Once a video is created, in order for it to be shared it needs to be hosted, or stored and made available somewhere on the internet. You may have your students upload videos to places like YouTube but this should only be in specific cases where it is understood, from the beginning of the course, that they are making video available on the public internet (that is, for anyone in the world.) This might be useful, for example, if you are specifically having teams of students create explainer videos for use in K-12 education.
However, in most cases you may wish to limit access to student video creations to your course. Within D2L, you can use Panopto to both host your videos, as well as create a space for students to upload videos for you to see (and assess). In fact, students "hand in" videos to Panopto via a D2L dropbox! COLI supplies specific tutorials both for you and your students for the Panopto Assignments process.
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Here's a great discussion of creating a documentary video assignment (aimed at K-12 students, but certainly adaptable to higher ed.) University of Houston's College of Education: Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling. Sample Assignment: Builds on a traditional term paper assignment, having students bring traditional scholarship into video creation. It was created for an undergraduate history course geared primarily toward freshmen and non-history majors. |