I’m part of a group of six Apple-distinguished educators, all of whom had met at the ADE academy. We each had various experiences in education; from an SEN class teacher who had been teaching for six years, to a Secondary teacher who had been in the classroom for 15 years, “It uses a simple drag-and-drop system.”to an experienced headteacher who had been teaching for 22 years. However, all six of us shared one same passion: using technology to excite and change the way we teach. We all also wanted to share what we knew about new and exciting technology with others in the classroom, so that they could hopefully gain some of our passion.
As part of the development of this group, we decided we wanted to use an exciting new app to produce short videos to share with other educationalist. Clips was released by Apple in March 2017 and is relatively new in the education world. As someone described to me recently, if Apple were to release a new iMovie now it would be Clips.
Clips is an app which can be used in a variety of different ways within the classroom. We have all used it in a various different ways, which shows what a flexible and vast app it is...
- Lee, for example, has used it to create videos with teachers when they are training, and is currently in the middle of a project on developing growth mindset with the app.
- Alan has been able to use Clips in school to report on different school events and explain Maths concepts. They are now starting to use it to develop literacy outdoors.
- The pupils at Claire’s school, meanwhile, choose how to present their work. Their first choice is often Clips as it is an exciting and easy app to use.
- Paul also uses it across the curriculum but they also use to make videos to show pupils new learning concepts and share information with parents.
- I’ve used it in a similar way to Claire, with many of my pupils opting to use it to showcase their work because of the accessibility features it offers. This is particularly useful for my SEN pupils.
So what makes Clips an exciting app to use within the classroom? This app allows pupils to tell a story using simple controls. There is no timeline, tracks or complicated editing tools; it uses a simple drag-and-drop system. Using speech recognition, you record the text you want to add to it, before adding fun filters and animated stickers from Disney. It all then comes together as a simple video clip which can be shared in various different ways on different platforms.
We decided to use Clips to showcase to other teachers what features it offers by producing a set of videos of different ways various edtech resources can be used in the classroom. Producing a set of videos on “We all love using technology to excite and change the way we teach.”assessment allowed us to look at some of our favourite tools, including Kahoot, Showbie, Explain Everything, SeeSaw and Apple Classroom.
These videos are all less than two minutes long, so they allow teachers to be able to watch them quickly and use the simple ideas within their classroom practice. We have been able to share all of these through our Twitter page and website, which have helped teachers worldwide to gain simple quick ideas.
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