This time of crisis has come with many constraints. With almost no smart classroom equipment at home, no dedicated audio and visual capturing device, and less or no experience to teach online, teachers are facing a massive challenge: How to keep students engaged effectively without face-to-face closeness?
Some teachers who were using smart classroom devices knew the basics of online teaching while many other teachers are learning everything right from scratch. This pandemic has made the teacher’s communities more active than ever, they are joking in their own voices, sharing their struggles of lesson planning, about peeping parents, sleeping students, and importantly exchanging know-how to manage the class smartly.
In an attempt to find the creative and the most effective approach to online learning, teachers are navigating the unexpected hurdles by recording the video lessons and sharing it with students. The recorded video lessons are amazingly beneficial for the students who have missed the class or want to revise the lesson and learn at their own pace. Teachers usually share the lessons with the students before class, giving them a fair idea of the topic, and emphasizing more on the interactive session.
But what are the ways of recording video lessons? Let’s hear it from Sherin.
Sherin, a mathematics teacher, who was recording the video lesson for the first time, captured how to solve an equation, a 20-minutes video in 2 hours. Following all the steps with the utmost clarity, when she played the video, she saw herself struggling to explain an equation that she was teaching from the last five years. And the reason was no pen to write on the laptop, inability to annotate on-screen when explaining the similarity between step 2 and step 6, and finally, she missed her students’ expressions to understand them.
While teachers are expected to use technology for teaching, the reality is very different. Now, left with no option than using digital means to reach out to students, it’s high time teachers are using technology in their day-to-day life. Here, we are going to talk about the popular ways teachers are trying out to record video lessons in just a few steps.
Required tools: Any TV or monitor, TutorPlus Device, Laptop
Methodology: Place the TutorPlus device on the top of the TV and connect it to the laptop through the USB connection, then connect the laptop to the TV using an HDMI cable, now the display/TV has been converted into a touch screen that can be manipulated via a stylus. Also, this connection of the laptop with the TutorPlus device assures that laptop can be controlled directly from the bigger display.
TutorPlus also comes with whiteboarding software that incorporates all the smart tools needed by the teachers to craft their lessons beautiful, full of multimedia content, and most importantly, a built-in education search engine to get the latest search.
Efficiency: As it is portable, teachers can install the device easily on their TV. With smart tools, teachers can write, draw, or annotate on the touch interactive screen and explain the topic in detail. The software has curated content for different curriculums. Just search the topic and get plenty of results in the form of images, videos, and texts, all from reliable informational sources.
In the online classroom, where the 1:1 bond of students with teachers reduces, retaining the attention of students is very difficult. Through images, videos, and texts along with the teacher’s video, makes lessons interesting.
A normal whiteboard only offers the writing space that becomes monotonous for students to follow but the tools and features of interactive whiteboarding software like Kneura Teach make any topic interesting.
TutorPlus has a built-in 1080p FHD camera and noise cancellation mic array which could be used to capture teacher’s video and audio while conducting an online class or recording lessons through screen capture. An added advantage is that the entire screen can be streamed live on social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, etc.
And also, if teachers want to share only the whiteboarding content, like mathematics equation or chemical composition, students can download that as a PDF from the same platform and take printouts for offline learning. This reduces the screen time for the students.
Required tools: Any TV or monitor, Galileo One, Mobile Phone
Methodology: Place TutorPlus Hub on the TV or monitor or any other standard display firmly to convert it to touch interactive. Now your TV is also a touch interactive computer where you can browse any generic search engine and pull out any content, use it as a Digital whiteboard with a wide gamut of teaching tools for engaging lessons. Place the mobile phone on the tripod and keep it in front of you to record the video lesson. Start teaching as you teach in the classroom with the same level of comfort.
Efficiency: TutorPlus Hub has the most advanced features, in-built computer, high-end processor, intuitive whiteboarding teaching software with a gamut of AI-enabled assistive teaching tools to explain the topics in detail.
The drag and drop access to multimedia content like images, videos, text, worksheets helps in creating engaging lessons without any hassle.
The record video lesson can be saved on mobile phone can be directly uploaded on YouTube. While uploading on Kneura platform, students will get access to the videos as well as the whiteboard content which they can later download and print for offline learning
Required tools: Whiteboard, dry-erase marker, and a camera
Methodology: Teach using the conventional whiteboard and place your mobile phone either on a tripod or stack of books or find a table or desk on which you can keep the phone capturing you perfectly. In good lighting, teachers can be clearly seen writing, explaining, and erasing the board.
Efficiency: Mobile phones have emerged out as a strong contender for capturing lessons during the pandemic. This kind of set up is simple and easy but comes with a con of image size restriction wherein teacher and board together do not fit in a frame. Sometimes students find it difficult to see the content on the whiteboard, in turn affects their learning outcome. Time spent on writing/ drawing to explain concepts reduces the student’s engagement on the recorded video.
Required tools: iPad/ pen tablet/any tablet, laptop.
Methodology: Turn on the screen/session recorder on your tablet or iPad or laptop and start teaching. With a stylus or Apple Pencil or Wacom tablet, explaining topics become much easier. Record your voice and explain the topics by annotating or writing.
Efficiency: The quality of the video certainly gets improved in comparison to mobile phones but the teacher is missing from the video. With voice-over, the connection can be maintained to a certain extent but the lack of teachers’ expressions and gestures to explain the topic makes the lessons boring. Again, the small screen of the tablet / iPad can be stressful for the teachers to use and doesn’t give a real-time teaching experience.
Now that, different scenarios are explained to record the video lessons, choose what matches the best to your requirements. Pick a topic, gather your equipment, and get started. The use of the right set of tools makes teaching easier, reduces the burden, and makes learning interesting for students.
Little Angels High School (LAHS), Gwalior unlike many other schools in India, has overcome the problem of managing online classes. When no one has an idea how to initiate the classes, the real zeal of LAHS management to reach the students with quality education, irrespective of the student’s location, made it a model school in Gwalior.
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