Simple video presentations using PowerPoint

Last week, I saw a really interesting short webinar by Jonathan Smith from the University of Reading about making presentational videos using PowerPoint (as part of the Learning Technology in EAP evening of webinars; recording available here). He was talking about making short videos about language points à la flipped classroom; so his students could watch them in their own time.

As the idea of the flipped classroom (either as a full-on approach or just as an occasional tool) has gathered momentum, I’ve become more convinced that it’s a useful addition to any teacher’s repertoire.  As ever with new technologies though, it always seems that you need a certain amount of time and techy know-how to start making your own video presentations. The idea of using an application that I’m already familiar with really appealed, so I thought I’d give it a go:

I’m not doing any teaching at the moment, but I’ll look forward to trying this out on the next unsuspecting group of students I do get my hands on. I’ve also been mulling over the idea of using this to make mini-summaries of presentations I do. That could be in the form of a short trailer before an event or it could be a brief overview to pass on afterwards.

Whenever I speak at an event or do some kind of workshop, someone always asks me if I can make my slides available. This can be problematic for a number of reasons. Because I use slides quite sparingly and can talk around a couple of bullet points for maybe 10 minutes, the slides on their own can be a bit meaningless. That’s fine if someone attended the session and just wants the slides as a reminder, but if they get passed on, it’s easy for them to be misinterpreted. Plus, if you plan to give a similar version of a talk at several events, you don’t always want the content shared around.

So I can envisage making a mini-summary of my session using a few key slides and just talking through the main ideas. That way there’s less chance of misinterpretation and also you’re not giving away all your best material!