Watch this short video hosted by Ed Kendall of Boclips  to learn how you can use video in your virtual learning platforms to keep students engaged and keep teachers coming back for more.

Teachers are busy people. There’s the constant balancing act of lesson-planning, grading papers, meeting with parents and co-workers, and organizing extra-curricular activities. And that’s on top of actually teaching lessons! So when a new resource comes along, it’s easy to see why it might not be a priority. There are so many tools that are wonderfully innovative and rich in pedagogical value, but if they take a long time to implement or aren’t easy to incorporate into existing workflows, they’re likely to fall by the wayside. Fortunately, this problem of “too little time” is one that many EdTech tools are looking to address.

As an unprecedented incident, few stakeholders were adequately prepared for the non-school-based education that’s been required in the wake of COVID-19. The crisis has left students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and companies that support them scrambling to adapt to the abrupt virtualization of education. It’s drastically changed the way we educate our children today, and it’s likely to reshape our approaches to education for the long-term.

In previous posts, we’ve covered how to use video to differentiate learning content and process. These are aspects of differentiation that teachers are often familiar with, but did you know that it’s also possible to differentiate the product of learning?

Repeated studies have shown that quality educational videos of appropriate lengths are one of the most effective and universally accessible uses of technology in any classroom.

Thousands of teachers are making the shift to online digital learning virtually overnight. This is a tricky situation as not all school districts have the same academic expectations about what the remainder of the year should look like, and not all students have equal access to technology at home. 

If you're like most teachers, you're already using some kind of video platform to share videos with students. Whether you're using a free video streaming site like YouTube, an all-in-one paid education site that includes videos, or a more streamlined solution like Boclips for Teachers that puts videos front and center in a curated way, you know that sharing videos with your students is a great way to meet them where they are.

No two virtual learning environments are the same, but whatever tools or systems teachers rely on to structure their course there is always a need for incorporating media in new ways. As more classrooms take on a digital space or go fully virtual, a variety of approaches in presenting media—especially video—can help keep the classroom feeling fresh, interactive, and dynamic.

It’s no wonder video streaming platforms have become the most used digital tool in classrooms today. [1] Educational videos are one of the most straightforward and accessible ways to incorporate media technology in support of classroom instruction. They function across multiple platforms and are easily accessible for almost any level of student. They lend themselves to a wide variety of academic applications limited only by the creativity of the instructor. They can be cross-curricular, bi-modal, horizontally aligned, or state standards specific. Also, some of them have music and cute cartoon characters.