Saving Time on Quick Teacher PD with WeVideo

I must confess something: I have a love / hate relationship with professional development workshops. While I understand the need for professional development and educator growth, I've had the unfortunate experience of sitting through many long-winded professional development sessions where the speakers seem to believe that PD is as simple as creating a slide deck with facts and figures and then reading it aloud to a group.

Luckily, I've also had the pleasure of attending a few truly engaging professional development workshops. The hosts were able to keep me on the edge of my seat, and I left feeling excited to learn new concepts. These experiences have instilled in me a love for delivering PD. I strive to create fun, engaging, and interactive workshops, even when the subject matter may be dry. I come prepared with lots of examples, and I always try to leave teachers and staff with something practical that they can use in their everyday lives.

But here’s my dilemma: Delivering PD is something I like; repeating stuff over and over... not so much.

That’s why I use WeVideo!

With WeVideo, I can make quick bite-sized videos to explain concepts that I’ve reviewed with students, teachers, and staff. What I really like is having these videos handy in either a YouTube playlist or on one of my devices so I can quickly and easily send them out over email or even text.

The advantage of using video is that it gives viewers the opportunity to pause, rewind, and review content as many times as necessary. (And the video, I’m sure, will never get tired of repeating things over and over!)

Here's my process for creating quick teacher PD:

1. Plan out your video

You need a script. Even if you think you can wing it, it’s always better if you have a script. Even a short one-minute video can be frustrating if you keep making mistakes because you’re busy improvising. It doesn't have to be a full production script, but make sure that you have an orderly list of the points you want to make.

An example of a script/outline I put together if I were to turn this blog article into a video.

2. Consider resources you'll need

I have a Google Slides deck where I come up with titles for my videos. This helps me keep a consistent identity and theme across my content. It also gives me a strong starting point next time I need a title for a video.

If you look at my deck, you’ll notice that I have titles in English and Spanish, as I frequently create a video twice (one in each language) for my staff. Google Slides also gives me the ease of just downloading one of the slides as a PNG which I can then quickly upload to my WeVideo media library.

Saving my title slide as a PNG to then upload to WeVideo.

3. It's showtime!

Get the cameras rolling! Make sure you have a good microphone as you’ll be narrating and explaining, and high-quality audio is essential. WeVideo’s screen recorder function is super practical and easy to use for recording your video.

Want to appear in the video? WeVideo will record your screen and your webcam (as separate assets!) so that you can give your audience a familiar face. Also consider using a green screen so that your actual background doesn’t interfere with the screen recording.

Don’t get frustrated—it’s totally normal to flub your lines, skip a step, and mess your recording up. You will get better at it, I promise! I do recommend that you don’t stop rolling, take a pause, and restate what you meant to; you can easily cut out what you don’t need.

That being said, if you don’t feel comfortable with what you’ve recorded, stand up, walk around a bit, and start over! Refreshing your brain works wonders if you get frustrated when something isn’t coming out “just right”.

And once you’re done…

4. Edit your footage

The fun part! Editing my footage in WeVideo.

This is easily my favorite part of the process, seeing all the mistakes and effort gel into a single product that I hope my audience will enjoy.

Here are a few tips that I always follow when editing my videos:

1. Use a title card

An example of a title card that I made.

Remember the title card you made in your slide deck? It's time to insert it in front of your recording! Remember to place a transition between it and the footage so it looks a little more professional. Hang on to that file for later too. You can use it on YouTube as the title for your video.

2. Take advantage of transitions

More about transitions—when cutting out hesitations or flubs in your recording, if you place a quick transition between the cut parts it will be less jarring and that “jump” that you see when it’s spliced and is less noticeable.

3. Remember—bite-sized

If, and this always happens to me, during your screen recordings you have long wait periods or load times, the editing bay is where you can shorten that wait time and make your video even more efficient.

Don’t be afraid to review the footage as you edit, that way you're familiar with it and can see how it has evolved until you're satisfied.

Once you’re happy with what appears to be your final edit, take a look at the total length of your video. Generally the longer a video is, the less probable it is that people will see it all the way through. I aim to not go over three minutes, but I think two is ideal. In my mind, any more than that is not quick PD.

4. Add depth to your content with WeVideo's media library

If you want to give your video a nice touch, dive into WeVideo’s media library and choose from thousands of audio tracks that you can add as background music for your video.

Remember to adjust audio levels in the audio track as you start speaking so that your explanations aren’t drowned out by music.

Adjusting audio levels in WeVideo.

While searching for a soundtrack, using keywords like “happy”, “instrumental” and “explain” will give you GREAT results.

At the very end of your video remember to fade the song down to zero as it’s unlikely that your video will be the exact length of the audio asset.

Make sure to also fade the last of your video track to black, giving the video a more graceful finish.

5. Share with others for feedback

If feasible, try showing your video to someone and see if they have any questions or suggestions around anything that might be missing. I often fail to see things I missed explaining; I make the mistaking of thinking that part of the process is obvious and people naturally know how to do it—feedback helps me correct this and create content that is both digestible and informative.

6. Export with quality

Time to export!

I recommend exporting in high-definition, especially if you're uploading to YouTube. The compression algorithm won’t help if you want the detail of your screen to show through.

When you upload to YouTube, you can quickly share the video with others by sending them a link. Uploading the actual video can be cumbersome. Of course, WeVideo has excellent rendering and videos tend to be small, but sharing a link is always faster. Your exported videos can also be shared with just a link directly from the WeVideo library!

I hope that by seeing how easily I make short and sweet PD videos, and by following some of my suggestions, you will be able to create professional-looking PD videos that engage and inform your audience.

And the best part is, you can do it all with WeVideo, a powerful online multimedia creation tool that's easy to use even for beginners and will run on almost any device! What are you waiting for? Start creating today!