Practical Teaching Tip: Record a Video of your Studio Demonstrations

I went to the FAEA conference in October (Florida Art Education Association) and there was an AWESOME ceramics teacher who video taped her demonstrations- genius!

Her reasoning was:

• #1 who has time to get out materials for demos when we art teachers usually have 3+ different preps
• #2 what happens when a student is absent...redo
• ...and #3 when you have 35+ kids in the class huddled around a small demo table how many of them actually see the demo?

So I tried it out....it went pretty well. The teacher at the conference used a tripod and an iphone, I just had one of my students record me on a digital camera. The other teacher was able to just record her hands so that when she replayed the video to the class the students would only focus on her hands and there was no audio (she would talk during the video and point out important aspects of the demo).

• Pros to video taping your demos: it can be replayed when students are absent, the video is only for what you expect the students to get done that day or within the next couple days so they do not forget the process, and all of the students are able to view the video without distractions. 
• Cons/Things I would do differently: I initially had one of my students record the video on my iphone and then I was going to upload it to Vimeo from there, problem...it took forever to upload (I am not that patient), so what I ended up doing on the second video is using a digital camera and uploading it to my computer. Videos also take up a lot of space and I don't have a ton of memory on my phone to begin with. The video camera worked fine, but what would be really great is a GoPro (the video camera that you strap to your head and you are able to record from your perspective), but I don't have one- future investment :) I think the GoPro would work better because in my video its a little hard to see what I am working on and you see some of my students in the background. 
• Uploading and showing the video: Here are a few things I learned: 1. I initially tried to transfer the iPhone video to Vimeo, but it took too long, so then I shot the video on a digital camera, plugged that into my computer and uploaded it to Vimeo that way. It worked, but then when I tried to upload a new video a few days later Vimeo said that I did not have enough space for that week, and that I could sign up for a small fee and have more space....no thanks. SO next time I am going to upload to YouTube.- let's see how this works. The big thing is that I want it online so that my students can view it from home if they are absent. Our district uses a program called Edline to post our grades. I tried to upload directly to that, but again there wasn't enough space, so in conclusion its better to upload it to another site such as YouTube so that it is storing out in the clouds.

Here is my video, I'm no pro by any means, just thought I would share.

I would love to hear your feedback! If you have recorded your demonstrations before share your experiences below and share what you learned :)

Until next time, keep it practical art teachers!