How to Record a Video in PowerPoint (Windows Desktop Version)

A couple of weeks ago I published directions for simultaneously captioning and translating PowerPoint presentations. That's one of many handy, occasionally overlooked, features that is built into PowerPoint. Video recording is another helpful feature built into PowerPoint. 

The built-in video recording tool in PowerPoint let's you record yourself talking over any and all of your slides. You can have your webcam turned on or off when recording. (I prefer to leave my webcam on when recording a screen because it personalizes the video). You can also use some built-in drawing tools to draw on your slide while talking and recording. Perhaps the best feature of all for some people will be the option to see your speaker notes while recording without the speaker notes showing up in the video. 

Videos that you record in PowerPoint are automatically inserted into your presentation. When you share your slides, viewers can watch the videos you've added into your presentation.

In my new video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to record a video in PowerPoint. 

Applications for Education

This is obviously a good tool for making instructional videos for your students to watch. I'd also consider having students use the built-in recording tool in PowerPoint to create short videos of their presentations. The drawing tools that are available could be good for having students explain their math or for having them annotate a chunk of text on a slide or highlight parts of a diagram in a slide. 

Calendars, Schedules, and Favicons - Three Easy Classroom Blog Enhancements

Writing yesterday's post about blogging permission slips inspired me to look back through my YouTube channel and find some blogging tutorials I've made over the years. A few that jumped out as being as relevant today as the day that I made them are this one about embedding calendars, this one about scheduling blog posts, and a couple about customizing a blog's favicon. 

Embedding Calendars

Adding a calendar page or a calendar into the sidebar of a blog is a good way to help students and their parents about upcoming due dates and events in your classroom or school. Blogger and Edublogs make it easy to include Google Calendar in your classroom blog. This video shows you how to do that. 

Scheduling Blog Posts

One of the best ways to get students and parents into the habit of reading your classroom blog is to post on a consistent schedule. Using the scheduling tools in Blogger and Edublogs enable you to write a batch of blog posts at once and then schedule them to appear over time. (I do this quite a bit here on Free Technology for Teachers). Here's a tutorial on how to do that. 

Custom Favicons

A favicon is the little icon that appears in a browser tab when you're visiting a website. If you use Blogger, WordPress, or Edublogs your favicon will default to that brand. You can change the favicon to make your blog stand-out in a sea of open browser tabs. This video shows you how to change it in Blogger and this one shows you how to change it in Edublogs.