I had a nerdy moment at #SXSWedu this week. Walking to the Edutopia meetup I asked directions from a woman near me. Turns out we were going to the same event. After a little chatter she reveals she is THE Lynda from Lynda.com. I had to get a picture with her.

Lynda

If you are not familiar with Lynda.com it is a training website for just about anything tech. The wide variety of video trainings available is amazing. Not only is there a huge selection of topics the videos are really well produced and it is easy to search for exactly what you want.

My Takeaway

Lynda.com was highly influential for me in learning HOW to make videos for my students. What I love about Lynda is that it is not just a super long training video. The lessons are SHORT videos that have a very specific title and I can see how long the video is. This saves me from having to scrub through video content that I don’t need to watch and it helps to maintain my interest during the learning.

Short Videos

When making videos for your students keep them SHORT. I try for 30 seconds. I can always make more videos. Oftentimes they creep around a minute, but 30 seconds is my goal.

Specific Titles

With super short videos I can title them with a meaningful title so that the student does not really need to watch the video. They watch the video for clarification or additional details, but the key takeaway is right in the title. This also helps the student to find that exact video for the one thing they are missing rather than having to watch an entire video lesson again.