Episode 5: Teacher Created Video_FINAL
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[00:00:00] Welcome to make EdTech 100. I am LindyHoc Educator, K 12 Ed Tech Advisor, and your host. This is a podcast where we keep it real about what actually works in classrooms. No hype, no overwhelm, just practical strategies, honest stories and tools that make a real difference for teachers and students. So come along with me on a journey to make EdTech 100.

Welcome back everyone. A few episodes ago I had a green screen gal herself, Erica Sandstrom, on the podcast, sharing about all the wonderful things she is doing with video. Since then, we presented our session. The Joy is Real. Our EEL. See what we did there at the FETC conference and it was a huge hit. It was so much fun.

I have gotten so many messages from the [00:01:00] teachers that came and it was 8:00 AM on the last day too, and we had a pretty full room. But so many messages from the teachers that came that said that they enjoyed it so much. They learned a lot. It was a lot of fun. I already had a goal set for 2026 to up my video making game in every way, shape and form, especially the public videos on my YouTube channel.

I make quite a few videos for my trainings and courses, but they are very specific to that learning context. And usually gated behind some sort of LMS. They're also super basic and not the most exciting videos that you've ever seen. So this has been a goal of mine, and specifically this year, I want to.

Give a glow up to the LindyHoc YouTube channel in terms of both video quantity and video quality. So on this episode, I [00:02:00] want to dig more into the research behind teacher creative video that I shared in our FETC session and tell you about what I learned from that session and how I'm already applying it in my practice.

To fully understand the research behind teacher created video, you need to understand the research behind the student teacher relationship. Basically, it's overwhelming.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies that come to the conclusion that the student teacher relationship is a critical component of student success in learning.

Research uses the word belongingness a lot. That basically means that students are more likely to be academically engaged when they feel that they belong in the space that they're learning in, in the studies and research teacher. Is very clearly linked to [00:03:00] student achievement, to the point that there are some studies out there that pretty much go as far to say, not in these exact words, but they're pretty much saying that if there is no teacher student relationship, that learning just will likely not occur, or a whole lot of learning won't occur for the student.

What I usually hear from teachers at this point of me kind of giving them a summary of the research is when do I have the time? I already have a PAC curriculum, I've gotta hit all these standards. We've gotta make sure they're gonna do well on the state testing and any other standardized tests that students have.

To take. When do I have time to do this? Well. I want you to just think about this. If the re I literally just told you that there's studies out there that say that if you don't have that relationship, that you're basically teaching to a wall in a lot of cases. So you really have [00:04:00] to find the time. But if you didn't guess, this is where teacher created videos come into play.

There is a study out there, it's one of my favorite studies on teacher created video that says that. If the teacher is creating videos for a class, those videos in student satisfaction participation and, and this is the biggie, can help develop a quasi relationship between teacher and student. So just think about that.

A quasi relationship. That's the exact words I took that straight out copy and paste from the study. A quasi relationship between teacher and student and other words, even if you don't have time to chat with every one of your 30 students in a 50 minute class period. If you're making videos that they're watching in class or out of class during study hall at night, when they're finishing their work, whenever, when they're homesick, you are helping [00:05:00] develop that relationship without you having to be there physically synchronously at every second.

There's a study out there about virtual instructors in particular that I think we can all learn from the virtual instructors were actually able to engage their students even more than they could in face-to-face courses by creating videos for those online courses.

Now I want you to think about, do you have a particular love or maybe bond with some type of online personality? It might be an actor or an actress. It might be a singer, maybe it's a journalist. I always use the example of Keith Morrison on Dateline. I listened to a lot of Dateline podcasts. They had the perfect marriage.

He just has that voice that's just an example of, I've never [00:06:00] met Keith Morrison, but I listen to his voice a lot. He has a very addicting voice but he is able to. Develop an emotional bond with me that is called a parasocial relationship. This idea of an emotional bond with an online personality.

For me, I love Taylor Swift. I do like to lyrically break down her music, and I just have to say a common misconception with Swifties is that we listen to her like mainstream music. No. I mean, I like her mainstream music. I'll listen to it every now and again. It's the non-mainstream music that's like lyrically intense that I like to break down.

So I connect with her that way from a lyric sense and a musical sense, but I just also connect with her as a woman, that has had so much pressure put on her and handled it with such grace, in my opinion. [00:07:00] So that's just an example of a parasocial relationship that I have. Taylor Swift doesn't know that I exist, but I feel like I know her and I feel so much connection with her, even though we've never met in person.

I've only watched her in videos and listened to her music a lot, but that's, that's the power now. This is usually where teachers start to look at me and you can tell, some of them are getting a little bit of what we call the ick and they're like, oh, but I don't like that. I don't like the idea of parasocial relationships.

I don't wanna have that relationship with my student. No, that's not what we're saying here. That's not what I'm saying here at all. I have a very one-sided relationship with Taylor Swift teacher-Student relationships are not one-sided. Should not be. One-sided at all, but we can take parts of that as teachers and apply it to our practice.

The particular thing that we can [00:08:00] apply or take from Parasocial relationships is that videos can help build and strengthen and extend the student teacher relationship beyond the limited class time. So if you're like, I don't have time. I don't have time to do this during class, okay, you're gonna be teaching to a wall, but you can help build by creating videos, and then you're not taking the class time and you're magnifying your reach as a teacher.

Now, in terms of the content. Of videos, what does the research say? Well, it's pretty clear. There's a lot of studies out there that in so many words, say that the teacher trumps quality. In other words, the teacher being the one in the video in some way or another, whether it's their voice, their voice and their face, maybe just their [00:09:00] face voice and or face we'll say is much more important than having a.

Khan Academy, perfection style video. The teacher is more important than the video quality. I just had a conversation with somebody yesterday about this, and we were talking about their students and she said that my students don't want perfection. They want authenticity from me as a teacher. And if you think about the videos that students watch and not just students.

Everyone. Anyone that's on any sort of social media or watches, YouTube, YouTube, tv, any of the above in any way, think about those videos. Some of the most popular viral videos are somebody putting on their makeup and talking about something as they're putting on their makeup. All they're doing is hitting the record [00:10:00] button and talking and sharing themselves authentically.

So think about that. We are not looking for Camtasia Quality Perfect, or Khan Academy Quality Perfect videos here. We're looking for authenticity, and it's way more important that you are in the video in some way as their teacher. There's a study that shows that the teachers seeming. Upbeat matters more than quality.

So again, you on the camera smiling. Sharing things is much more important than the video quality being perfect. And let's face it, you don't have time as a teacher to spend hours editing perfect quality video. I tell teachers that. You need to share about yourself. You need to make sure [00:11:00] students know that you are a human.

Some people, again, start to get the ick about that. They're like, yeah, but I'm a private person. , You can still be a private person. Keep your privacy. You don't have to share things that are sacred to you, but choose certain things that you're comfortable sharing. I tend to talk a lot about my dogs.

And share a lot of pictures and videos of my dogs. They're kind of like a main character in my life, and so I share that if you wanna talk about your kids, a lot of teachers like to talk about their kids that they have. Great. If you wanna keep that private, then don't find something else in your life, a hobby that you have, something you do outside of school and bring that into the classroom in some way.

, Finding something that expresses your personality that you can take and you can weave throughout your teaching is really important.

Now, what does the research say about the length of videos? This is usually where I get some [00:12:00] shocks and some ahs from the audience the research is a bit all over the place. I always provide that caveat, if you look at the newer research, it lands at about 30 seconds to three minutes.

There are some studies that say more like 5, 6, 7 minutes, but they're older. The newer studies all land right about that three-ish minute mark. And this is not just kids, this is for any. Age learner, this is adults as well. We start to lose engagement at about that three minute mark. The research also says that you can segment too much.

You don't wanna have videos that are under 30 seconds. That's where the 30 seconds to three minutes comes into play.

The strategy to take away from putting all of this research together is that you need to create short, informal, not fancy videos [00:13:00] that have your voice and or your face. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about some strategies. If you're not comfortable yet having your face on camera, a lot of people aren't.

That's okay. There's still stuff and strategies that you can do, so your voice and your face, short videos that have your voice and your face. Now, in terms of the content of the videos, the knee jerk reaction of many teachers is to turn lectures or content into video, like the flipped classroom idea. That is definitely something that you can do.

But is by far not the only way that you can leverage video. You can do it for lesson introduction. So I always use the example of if you're teaching in an in-person classroom, what do you do at the start of the day or the start of the C period? You get in front of the room and nobody's listening, and then you have to repeat it five times. That never happens, right? So instead of doing that, turn it into a video and then create the routine that when your [00:14:00] students walk into your class, they open up their device and there's a video waiting for them for whatever they're going to be doing that day.

And then if you get the question of what are we doing that day? What do you say? It's in the video. It's in the video in your learning management system. . And that becomes, , a habit that your students get in the same vein instructions. So instead of standing up and maybe giving the instructions of here's what we're gonna do, turn it into a video, and then again, when somebody says, wait, what did you say we're doing here?

It's in the video. And as long as it's fairly short, it's easy for them to go back and find the exact spot in the video of whatever they need to repeat. Pep talks are also a great thing, so just little 32nd how's everybody doing today type of things. Kind of boost the mood if you need to and feedback.

This is super underutilized. Use of video teaching instead of red penning it, or writing little [00:15:00] notes in the columns or in comments in a Google doc. Sometimes that takes a really long time to type out or write out comments. Hit record in a video and say, this is what you're doing well, or say, give 'em a compliment sandwich.

Start with what did they do well? What could they improve on, and then end with something that they did well. All of this research is summarized in a blog post on the LindyHoc blog. I will put the link in the show notes for you on that blog post. There is also an infographic that it's a two page infographic if you like, a really visual.

View of all of it, like a summary that you can print and put on your desk or share with others that is there as well. In the blog is some research. The specific studies are in the blog. I didn't put all of the studies. I only put maybe like 10. If you are a research nerd like me and you want even more studies to reference, then my book, A Teacher's Guide to Online [00:16:00] Learning.

Goes in depth with all of this and has a lot more research studies cited, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

That is the research part that I shared in our FATC session, but I personally learned so much from the session from both Erica as well as the participants. Erica had a start by looking at an engaging video. We looked at one of the kid president videos. So we watched it and then we went back and we broke down what was done from a video production standpoint to keep your attention.

This was so enlightening to me. I've thought about these things, but I've really never thought, thought about these things, if you know what I mean. So we pointed out things like they used voiceovers. It wasn't always kid president on the camera talking there. Were there a lot of points in the video where [00:17:00] they're just kind of panning on him or maybe panning on a chalkboard and then kid president is voiceover in the background.

This is a really great option if you aren't comfortable being on camera yet, you could record a video of you showing your students how to do something, or maybe you put your instructions on the screen. But instead of you being on camera talking through the instructions, you then do a voiceover over the top talking through the instructions.

It just takes that pressure off of feeling like you have to be on camera that a lot of people don't like, and it helps you work up to that comfort level. It is something that you can work up to being comfortable at. I've been working on this for years. I still am working on. Being even better on camera and not stumbling over my words and saying, um, and like a million times, it's a [00:18:00] constant work in progress, but you're never gonna get better.

What do you tell your students? You're never gonna get better unless you practice and unless you try. So that's a great practice option. Like you tell your students as well, or well, maybe you don't tell them, but you do. You scaffold for your students, right? You scaffold them into learning. How to do long division.

You're scaffolding yourself into getting comfortable making videos by doing something like a voiceover. There are also points where maybe they like speed up parts of the video or opposite too. Sometimes maybe there's like a slowmo part, but I loved how Erica described that. She said, she tells her students that nobody wants to watch paint dry.

So if there's a part of your video that's maybe a little slow, you can just, you know, put it at like 1.25 speed or 1.5 speed, speed that up. You see that a lot with like toy short form video style videos. There's also human moments and outtakes. So in the Kid [00:19:00] present video, and you see, again, see this a lot with like TikTok videos.

They embrace the funny things, they embrace the errors. You don't have to edit. That stuff out. You can keep , that stuff in. You know, this podcast is all about keeping it real, so I try to, I do edit some stuff out because I sound like a dodo sometimes, but there's a lot of stuff, as you probably know from listening, that I don't take out, and I try to keep those kind of human moments and outtakes.

They did that as well a lot with the kid president videos, and like I said, you'll see that a lot with like TikTok videos. Adding text, whether it's an overlay. You'll notice if you're a TikTok user, by the way, wait, let me just pause there for a second. I'm saying TikTok a lot. I use TikTok a lot. \, A lot of people aren't happy with TikTok in the last year especially, but even the last week it's gotten even worse 'cause it changed ownership and anyway, algorithm change in all of the things and I totally get.[00:20:00] 

If you get the ick from TikTok because there is some ick there in terms of privacy policy and now the changing all the things, all the drama with the US banning it, the not banning it type of thing. , But if you can, I think you can go watch TikTok videos without creating an account. I think I need to fact check that, but I'm pretty sure.

You need to go watch TikTok videos. If you have Instagram or Facebook, you can watch reels because spoiler alert, Instagram and Facebook reels are old TikTok videos. I promise. That's really, really the case. If I just blew your, blew your mind right now, that's all they are. You are getting TikTok videos like a week or two after.

They were on TikTok when you're watching reels, but it is way better than nothing. So go to Instagram, go to Facebook, one of those three [00:21:00] platforms. Oh, another one. Here's another one. And I know you can do this without having an account. YouTube. Has, if you didn't know this, a whole YouTube shorts section.

That's all short form video. That is the TikTok, the nine by 16 aspect ratio. So that's like the phone size, style videos that are really short, like under three minutes. That's place you could go and just study short form video. That's what your students are consuming.

That's what interests them. That's what some of them are addicted to. And again, we don't wanna create an addiction. That's not the takeaway here. Just like the parasocial relationships, not the takeaway here, but we can take parts and pieces of that to make learning more engaging, especially for Gen Z and Genelle for learners.

In the K 12 space. Okay, so unpause there. This leads to my next point. One of the other things that video production does is add text. If you watch [00:22:00] TikTok style videos, a lot of them put the captions over the top of the video. A lot of people watch TikTok, including myself. I do this probably way too much with the volume completely off.

So I really like when the caption's over the top I, your students are doing the same things. They have their AirPods , in their ears all the time. Seems like all the time. But I'm, I know that they're watching TikTok videos with the volume off, like, I promise you. So that's something you can do or just adding in text blurbs, maybe on the side, maybe on the bottom. Maybe you change the layout a little bit and add a little bit of text, you want movement in your videos. You want something to constantly kind of be happening to change it up and adding text to the screen, taking away text, adding more text in different ways is a good way to do that.

Another thing that's used a lot in video production is music, so having a [00:23:00] little bit of background music. It doesn't have to be for the whole video. It probably shouldn't be for the whole video, and starting and stopping that music at key points to grab attention and engagement. Also, sound effects are huge.

You'll see that a lot in the short form video world, and this is a biggie for me that's so easy to do. Zooming in and zooming out or changing the angle of the camera a little bit is just super simple. And again, just adds that movement that you need to keep people's attention. That's how we started the workshop.

Go do that. Go find a video that keeps your attention. Kid President's a great example. That's what Erica used, and watch it and just see how engaged you are. See if you make it through the kid president video is about four. I think it might even be four over four minutes, and it had everybody in the room enthralled.

And it's over that three minute point that I told you that research [00:24:00] tends to say we lose attention. So watch it, but then go back through and pay attention the second time. To those little things that I was just talking about, changing ankles, zooming in, zooming out, adding music, voiceovers, et cetera. Erica has taken all of those things and has created a video production menu that has all of these items that I just talked about and even more that I didn't talk about, like green screen stop animation,

as a way for you to look at this menu and go, okay, I need to make my video more engaging. What can I pick from this menu to do that? What little changes could I make to my video to add a little bit of fun, excitement, engagement, attention, whatever you wanna call it.

I love this. This menu is perfection. I have already used it, so I came back from FETC, really invigorated to try [00:25:00] adding some of these menu elements into my videos and my work. And guess what? Last week I made not one, not two, not three, but four videos. And in one day, people a few years ago.

Several years ago, we'll say, it probably would've taken me a week to make four videos. Depending upon the type of video, if it was just a simple screen pass video, no. But like to do any editing and add any of those video menu items I was just talking about, it would've taken me a really long time that I don't have the time for.

Hence why it doesn't happen usually, I wanna do a truth or teach segment here to share my personal wins and fails. With these four videos that I made last week, so my wins, I did really well trying different layouts, so I really played [00:26:00] around with having me on the full screen and then switching over to a screen share where I was kind of in the corner.

My face was still there, but I was like in the corner and I kind of moved my video around a little bit so I wasn't always just in the same corner. So again, kind of adding that movement, I did really well with zooming in and and out to draw attention to specific parts of the screen, and I was creating very much .

Showing teachers how to use different tool type videos. So when I was saying , Hey, go to the right side of the screen, I would zoom in where my mouse is a little bit. So that is both a productive edit, because it's showing them exactly where they need to go, but also adding that, that movement to the video.

So it wasn't just my screen share with me in the corner for the whole three minutes. I did a really good job of adding text. I did some sidebars, so I put where it was [00:27:00] me on the frame or just, you know, my camera not sharing my screen, and then text on the left. I played around with adding some captions for prompts, so I was sharing some different examples of.

How I was using like Canva AI to create interactive activities and I wanted to share a prompt that I used with them so that they had an example prompt that they could just go use if they wanted. So instead of just me reading the prompt, I put a caption on the screen where it was showing the prompt text as I was reading it,

I started with the text templates that were built into the tool, but then as I went through each of those four videos, I got a little bit more brave and a little more comfortable. That's how it works, right? And I started customizing the text with my purple colors and such, the Lindy hot colors to add a little bit even more fun than just black and white [00:28:00] text.

I tried to make it so that the videos were purposeful and easy to follow and productive, but still show a little bit of my personality,

so those are. The wins. That I had for my truth or teach moment with my video creation last week where I want to continue improving. I didn't do any adding music or sound effects. One of the videos I talk about vibe coding and I always think of the Beach Boys song, good vibrations. They're picking up good vibrations.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You don't want me to sing. , But you get the point so , that. Tune comes in my mind when I hear the word vibe coding. So I added into the text when I said vibe coding that something about, Hey, you know, we're, this reminds me of the Beach Boys song, good Vibrations, or something like that.

I wanted to add a clip of the song, but honestly I wasn't sure about copyright, so I really didn't know how. [00:29:00] And I wasn't sure about copyright I know you can include so many seconds of a song within copyright limits, but honestly, we're all about keeping it real here. I didn't have the time to research the copyright restrictions and make sure I was good there and also figure out the technical part to add this in. So I just decided to leave it for now and set a goal that that is something I am going to keep learning and experimenting with in my video creation journey.

I really wanted to do some animation type things, and I tried, and I couldn't quite get it right in the video editing software. I was almost there, but again, ran outta time, so I was like, all right, we're gonna table that. We're gonna come back to it. But I think I can do a lot with animations, although the videos I made last week are an improvement over what I have done in the past.

They're still a little dry. Again, I'm really working to find that balance between [00:30:00] clear and purposeful and helpful, but also engaging to watch and accessible. That's very important to me, that the videos are accessible with captions, et cetera, all while taking as little time as possible to create those videos because we are all short.

On time, I don't have the total answers yet. Go to my YouTube channel, go to the LindyHoc YouTube channel. You can see the four videos I made last week. They are a huge improvement over what I've done in the past, but like I said, I still have a lot of learning to do and we'll keep plugging along.

So there you have it. The research behind why video is so powerful as a learning tool, as well as some updates on my video glow up. I'm doing a session on this at the NCCE conference in Seattle at the end of February. So if you're in Seattle, come join me. We're gonna cover a lot of this stuff and [00:31:00] I'll update you on my video creation journey.

My Make ed Tech 100 moment to leave you with today is that in the year 2026, video is not an optional teacher strategy if you're teaching in K 12. Honestly, if you're teaching anywhere K 12 through higher ed, unless you have your nontraditional students in higher ed, of course you're teaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha learners and they live in a world of video.

They have never lived in a world without YouTube. Think about it. They know no different. It's in their genetics literally to learn from video. They've always lived in a world where you can log into the internet and you can learn anything from anyone at any point in time.

If formal education is gonna remain relevant to these learners, we have to incorporate this form of media into [00:32:00] our teaching. I'm doing it. You can too.

Thanks for joining Make EdTech 100. I know educator time is valuable and I'm honored you choose to spend yours with me. For more EdTech strategies you can use tomorrow and ways to bring me to your school or event, head to LindyHoc.com. If this episode resonated, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

I'm LindyHoc. Go forth and make EdTech 100.