Too many videos!
Earlier this year, I answered a question from Melbourne teacher Lisa Sutton who asked how to get videos off the iPad.
Another teacher – Mallory – wanted to know: what should I do with them after that?
Remove videos regularly
First of all, I would get into the habit of routinely removing videos from your device. They will quickly fill up any space you might have. It’s a good idea to always have some empty space on your device and avoid having it at capacity.
Keep or discard the videos?
This is a question that will differ for each person. I tend to be a bit of a magpie when it comes to keeping digital things, but of late I’ve been asking myself “do I really need to keep this?”
In the case of student work I would think that archiving videos somewhere off your device (i.e. on a hard drive) would be the best choice. Having said that, you should definitely be selective. There’s no point keeping blurry, out of focus videos or those with poor audio quality if you have better examples.
You might like to consider implementing a policy of keeping digital student work like videos for a specific amount of time – 2 years or 5 years or until the student has left the school – If your school doesn’t already have such a policy in place.
And if you don’t really need to keep them beyond the end of the school year, I would do as Mallory herself suggested and pick a few of the best ones that can go into your own personal teaching portfolio.
Where to put them?
You can move the videos to your laptop or desktop computer but ultimately if you are producing a lot of videos this may not be a good long term solution. Archiving them on an external hard drive would be my choice, or you could upload them to an online storage solution such as Dropbox if you have the space in your account.
If the videos are very important ones – perhaps a senior student’s end of year performance – back them up in a second location.
Organization – file management
It’s best to group videos somehow – by class, by year level and by project so that they are easier to find later on.
File-naming protocols are imperative! Think about your future self – how will you search for this file in the three months from now? I name all my files with keywords that I think I might use in a search later down the track. Sometimes the file name looks strange because it’s just a string of words rather than a readable title, but I know if will make my life easier in the long run!
For student work it’s good to have file-naming protocols in place. For instance you may have a standard format such as: student name_date_project name or something similar.
Moving videos off your device regularly makes file management easier. If you leave it too long you will have far too many to deal with in one go!
Sharing student videos
Emailing videos to parents or students is NOT a good solution. The files are simply too large. One option is to copy files on to a flash drive and give the flash drive to the student or parents. Simple and easy and require no internet connection!
Alternatively, upload the videos somewhere online (see below for options) so that parents and students can view and/or download the videos from a central location. An added benefit here is that uploading them to an online platform provides you with another backup copy of the video.
The online upload options might depend on your school privacy policy and the tools that are available to you. Don’t forget that most online platforms allow you to control the privacy settings, so that the video can only be viewed by people with the direct link.
Choices include:
- Youtube
- Vimeo
- Teacher Tube
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- Your school content management system (if you have one)
The link can then be shared with parents and students and they can view the video online.
Action steps
1. Cull videos: delete any bad quality videos off your device straight away
2. Routinely move videos off your device – once a week, once a fortnight or once a term
3. Label the files so they can be found in the future
4. Consider a second back up of important videos
5. Share videos with students and parents via a flash drive or on an online platform
Your tips?
Do you have any tips you can share? What would you add to this list? Share them in the comments below.
