Teaching Resources: How to Create Short Animated Videos
Jenne Talbot, a site coordinator at Clearfield High School, creates short animated videos each week to help students stay focused. These visually appealing videos are easy to make and help give Jenne and her school yet another way to reach students directly with information that they need to finish high school and prepare for college.
Wrapping up UCAW: What do we do next? Watch video
After High School, what do I do? Watch video
Congratulations Seniors! You are one step closer to graduation. Watch video
At this point in the school year, you may be looking for new ways to reach your students. Jenne Talbot, site coordinator at Clearfield High School felt this way too. That is why she started making videos last fall. Talbot said that “we created the videos to help communicate with our students when being able to meet in person is limited.” She has continued to create them weekly and monthly for her students and parents.
“Each month we have a topic and then we have videos each week that are shared to our seniors during their mentoring time,” said Talbot. “We also email these videos to the parents at the start of each month so they can view them as well.” Examples of Talbot’s videos accompany this story and include her own voice talking about UCAW, or Utah College Application Week, congratulating seniors, and giving students advice about staying on track with assignments.
The USU STARS! GEAR UP communication team started experimenting with the creation of short animated videos over a year ago to address common questions and concerns at our schools. To help with this process we started with a monthly trial with Vyond online animation software, and purchased the essential plan for a year after our demo ran out. Using this software package is like creating a PowerPoint presentation. Messages can be inserted into the videos. Visuals are built out to accompany the messages. Finally a voice or voices are recorded to add to the visual. By using this process, we have created ten videos in our GEAR UP Guides series to help students get through high school and prepare for college.
When asked about making the videos for Clearfield High School students, Talbot says that it takes her about 30 minutes to make a video. She usually starts with an outline divided out by scenes and then records a voice with the scenes. No special recording equipment is needed. Talbot said that they share the link of the video with parents and students via email/canvas, and also download a copy to cloud storage, such as ONEDRIVE, to save for future use.
“We have had a lot of fun!” said Talbot. “Our counseling department has also used the program now to communicate their items to students and parents too.” If you decide that you are interested in trying out the Vyond Videos for your school. Their website offers a free trial. You can reach out to the USU STARS! Admin team or Jeannine or Zach in communication if you have more questions. As a final word of advice about making the videos, “don't strive for perfection,” said Talbot. “We have a few of our staff who struggle with this and it has taken them a lot longer to make the videos.”
We welcome you to reach out to Jenne or our USU STARS! GEAR UP communication team to ask any questions or get started.