How to use videos while teaching remotely?

Teachers have always been using videos to engage English language learners, but now more than ever it is has become an essential tool to truly motivate learning. While we are teaching remotely, the reasons behind why videos are important in education continue to be just as important. We traditionally use videos to engage students in and out of the classroom and through multimedia catch their attention. Nowadays, video can be a critical way of connecting with students despite the social distancing restrictions, and now as some schools return to the classrooms under different models, it can continue to be of great support for teachers and students. In this article, we’ll revisit the benefits of teaching and learning through videos. 

Teaching through videos allows students to: 

1. Have access to on-demand, bite-sized microlearning experiences. You can create a library of videos in a simple Google Drive shared file, a Google Classroom, or Edmodo. Although, you could also use platforms like English Central to create your classrooms and edit videos to include questions for your students. If you’re a school and are interested in know more about English Central, contact us. 
2. Increase their interaction and engagement with the content. Teaching remotely opens the door to using creative strategies to get students engaged, but at the same time ensures accountability of the tasks at hand depending on the tools you use.
3. Access for multi-device learning such as computers, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. Especially with the evident digital divide that has surfaced due to the pandemic, we as teachers should consider that videos are an easy way to reach students, granted that it’s still important to consider connectivity. 

Now, let’s consider how we can prepare videos for our lessons. 

1. Keep it short. Use segments or clips. Use video segments to maintain your students’ attention as well as 
2. Connect with the target language and align with the lesson objective. Even though videos can be fun, it’s also important to make sure they are aligned to your target objective and language to ensure students can use this opportunity to continue learning and reinforcing the language.
3. Allow active learning with the right tools. Selecting the right tools will depend on a great variety of factors such as your students access to devices and connectivity, the skill targeted in the activity (vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, etc.), or the aim of the content of the lesson (inform, explain, etc.)
4. Use videos to connect with students. Teachers can create videos to make short instructional or explanation videos to connect more with students while teaching remotely.