Creating and enhancing videos

This four part guide shares recommendations for finding and evaluating quality videos to support classroom instruction. This guide also offers teachers tips on incorporating videos into their curriculum. This could be printed out and used for professional learning sessions on flipping your classroom. Written by Catlin Tucker for Mind/Shift.

The TED-Ed platform allows educators to build lessons around any TED talk or YouTube video. Educators can add multiple choice questions, the opportunity to "dig deeper" by providing explanations and or additional suggested resources, and link to a discussion about the video. Teachers can create new lessons based on the ones already in the TED library or create one from scratch. This resource is free to use. 

My simple slideshow creates "explainer video" slideshows by reading your script  then selecting certain words and inserting images to accompany them. (You can change these words and images if you wish to.) Recommended for opening a lesson or for teachers who flip their classrooms. The basic plan is free to use. 

EDpuzzle enables teachers to increase the instructional value of videos by adding enhancements such as comments, multiple-choice or open-ended questions. Teachers can also select different parts of the video to show students. Teachers can view how long students watched the video, if they re-watched any sections, and track student/whole class responses to the questions.  Please note this is not a video creation tool; EDpuzzle only works with pre-existing videos. This tool is free for teachers to use. 

Create videos, animations or intros to YouTube videos with Moovly. Users choose a template for the movie (or create their own) add the content (your own or from their library),download and share when it's finished. Moovly is free for teachers. 

Adobe Spark is a free web-based tool for creating images, web pages, and videos. It can be used by teachers to create class content and publish student work. Users start by selecting what they'd like to create: announcement, poster, social media post, and presentation are some of the options. Add text and images, either from their Creative Commons library, a cloud repository like Google Drive, or your computer.  An alternative to iMovie, Adobe Spark is free but users must create an account.