Video has become a more ubiquitous element in education today: YouTube Videos, Kahn Academy, Flipped Content, iTunes U, and more. However, most teachers don’t want their students passively absorbing content. Rather, they want to make sure that students are engaged with the material. A great tool for incorporating more responsive features in your lessons is Zaption, which you can use to create interactive videos via a web browser or their free iOS App.
Take the Zaption Tour to see what's possible.
While Zaption does offer a robust, subscription model, the free tool will allow teachers to do a lot with both existing videos as well as those they create. After you sign up for an account, select “New Tour” on the top left of your screen. This will open the editing screen. The great thing about Zaption is that everything is drag and drop. So if you’re a bit lost, just try clicking and dragging something! If you want to add video, you can search for content online (YouTube, Vimeo, PBS, Nat Geo, etc), the Zaption library, or upload your own videos. Once you find the video that you want, simply click “Add this video to tour.”
Once the video is added, you can trim it down to the most important points and add subtitles. You can add multiple videos as well as still slides, drawings, and text slides in order to build a larger, more comprehensive broadcast. Once you have completed the video, it’s time to add in the interactive features! With the free version you can include: open responses, multiple choice, and check box questions (the pro feature adds a broader range of response elements that you may want to explore).
To share your video, simply click the red “Publish” button on the top right. Once published, click on the “share” button where you can retrieve a shareable link or an embed code to use on a website or an LMS. You can view responses to your questions by clicking on “Analytics.” Zaption videos are viewable via their free iOS App or via a web browser.EdTechTeacher will be offering Summer Workshops on The Flipped Classroom, Google & Chromebooks, iPads, and more in 5 cities this June and July.
