Distance Learning Hack: Teaching by video is easy on Loom

Monday, August 24, 2020 - 1 comment

Distance learning has completely changed teaching and it's not better or worse, it's just different.

Okay, maybe it is worse.

But, if your school is currently completely virtual - Loom can be your best friend.

What is Loom? Here's a brief rundown:

Loom lets you screen record and you can include video of yourself if you want to (or not).

Oh, and the best part - it's FREE.

Yeah. Free.

This is not some sort of weird ad for Loom - it's literally just amazing and could be extremely helpful in your (virtual) classroom if you have asynchronous classes 🙃

How does it work?

I have the Chrome extension on my computer (you can download it from the Chrome extension store) and I literally just click a little button in the top right corner of my browser, and I can start recording.

I can choose whether or not I want to include myself in the video or just screen record, and I click "record," and then "stop" when I'm done.

And then it spits out a link I can copy to send my video to whoever.

So, like, you could record yourself teaching Spanish greetings and goodbyes, and then upload the video to your Google Classroom for students to watch.

Apparently the desktop app includes a Drawing Tool, which you can use to write on the screen to teach.

It's like making your computer screen into a SMART Board and sending the video out to students.

There's also a version for your phone if you want to teach on the go 😜

You can read Loom's Guide to Using Loom for Education if you want allllll the details.

I hope Loom makes distance teaching just ever so slightly less terrible 😬