Without Mentioning It, Google Silently Released a Pretty Awesome Video Editor
Are you looking to find the perfect video editor to use with your students? Google recently added a pretty awesome feature in Google Slides that now allows users to create slide decks using videos stored on their Google Drives.
As if that feature isn't a total game changer, users can now have additional options when working with video. By right-clicking (or double tapping) on the video box, you can open up a new Video Options panel that allows you to edit and trim the video to the desired size.
How is this a video editor?
This week, I was working with a teacher on creating visuals for a school assembly. The teacher had a video that he wanted to include on slides. After trying out PowerPoint, and a few other options we took a different approach and added the videos to drive and one by one, trimmed them into a Google Slides presentation. The assembly, I'm happy to say, went very smoothly and the teacher was an absolute rockstar!
Additional uses in the classroom
Later that same day, I was working with a kindergarten teacher who was looking to create a lesson where her kids would be identifying animal sounds. At the time we met, she had one youtube video per slide and some of the videos were very long. Together, we trimmed the videos down to size and used the new (and very awesome) autoplay feature so that she can advance the slides and concentrate fully on her students (and not the technology).
Additionally, by using the “mute audio” feature, we added several auto-play videos on one slide. By muting all but one video, we are now able to ask the kids to look at multiple animals on the screen all playing at the same time … yet, only one animal is making the sound. Pretty hot … right?
How else can we use this in education?
Looking to stretch the features of Google Slides even farther, I met with our yearbook advisors to see what we can really do to promote interactivity in our paper publications. I asked the simple question: “What if … we took video of our staff saying wonderful things about the school year and added those videos into a single Google Slides presentation. THEN … we take each slide and create a QR code for it so that the yearbook photos can be sent to an individual slide inside of the presentation deck. (See where I'm going with this???)
Is Slides the PERFECT solution for video?
Before we conclude today, let's just take a step back and say that this Google Slides is NOT the same type of video editor that will replace ANYTHING on the market calling itself a video editor. True, you can create slides that autoplay videos, but you still have to babysit the computer and manually advance the slides. All that being said and carefully thought out, I hope you can see that Google has now put just a bit more power in the hands of its users and given them the ability to go above and beyond what was currently unavailable to classroom teachers.
How can YOU use this great feature in your classroom?
There are several great ways of using Google Slides as we have discussed several times on TeacherCast. I'm curious to know how you are using Google Slides for more than just a “boring slides deck” Please leave comments below and share some links to your favorite uses and blog posts.
About the author, Jeffrey Bradbury
Jeff Bradbury, creator of TeacherCast, and father of the famous @EduTriplets Thanks for checking out TeacherCast today. Please take a moment to find me on all of my Social Media channels!