Creating Instructional Videos

About this unit

Plan, design and create instructional teaching videos. Perfect for reinforcing other areas of the curriculum. Students can create videos to support each other with revision and then share them online to give access to everyone in the class.

National Curriculum Links - Computing KS2

The content of this plan cover the following National Curriculum strands:

select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information
use technology safely, respectfully and responsibly; recognise acceptable/unacceptable behaviour; identify a range of ways to report concerns about content and contact.

Curriculum Mapping

Why this? What does it build on?

This unit builds directly on other multimedia units of work in our scheme, most recently, Manipulating Sound (Year 5), where students will also experience combining and editing lots of multimedia elements (sound) on a timeline, skills which relate directly to this unit where they do the same but combine video, images, text and sound. Building Collaborative Websites (Year 5) also supports this unit with planning a multimedia project that combines a variety of digital artifacts, and Digital Imagery - Patterns in Nature (Year 4) gives them experience of image editing and combining multiple layers.

What comes next?

Students will apply some of the multimedia skills learned in this unit in Manipulating Images (Year 6), where they will extend their skills in image editing by creating and capturing images and combining layers to create new images. Our multimedia project units Making the News (Year 7) and Planning the Festival (Year 8) also provide students with the opportunity to apply their digital making skills using video, images, text and sound.

View our full curriculum map

Take a look at our full curriculum map to see how units across all year groups, from Year 1 to Year 6 link.

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Unit Resources

Lesson Slides

Detailed lesson slides for you to use when delivering this unit of work with your class

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Unit Assessment Sheet

Use our simple assessment system to measure your students' success in this unit of work.

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Lessons

Lesson 1

To understand and explain the features of an instructional video.
To critically evaluate existing instructional videos.
To work successfully in a team to plan an instructional video.

Analyse and plan

Lesson 2

To create a clear and factually accurate script for an instructional video.
To critically evaluate another group’s script for an instructional video.
To experiment with text, image and formatting tools in presentation software.

Scripting and introducing Keynote

Lessons 3, 4 and 5

To add text and images to a presentation appropriate for the audience.
To add consistent formatting throughout a presentation.
To record an instructional video guide in small sections.
To cut, trim and order video clips effectively to create a video project.

Creating the video

Lesson 6

Critically evaluate your own and others’ video, refining for a given audience or task.
Upload and share a video with a group using collaborative web tools.

Constructive comments

Suggested Software

The following are some of the apps you might need for this project. There may be other alternatives out there but here are some we’ve tested and like:

Script writing

Pages (free) - Also preinstalled on most iPads, Pages is Apple’s answer to Word and Publisher. It acts as a word processor and desktop publishing tool. It's particularly useful for movie making projects as it allows you to turn your script into an easy to use teleprompter. Which means no more students speaking to camera with their heads buried in script cards or squinting to read the tiny notes being held up for them to read.

Screen recording/demonstration apps:

All of these apps allow you to use your iPad like an interactive whiteboard and support being able to write on, annotate or highlight the screen, add text or images over a number of pages. They all also allow screen recording with narration which make them ideal for making tutorial videos.

Explain Everything Edu (13.99) - Probably the best option out there, but it is expensive. Allows recording and detailed editing of recordings within the app and has a large set of tools for creating and explaining your projects.
Doceri Interactive Whiteboard (free) - Free but contains a small watermark in the corner of exported videos, which is not a big problem. It has a good range of backgrounds, pen and shape options for drawing and annotating. It lacks the ability to add typed text so you need to rely on the pen tools for titles. labels etc. So not too many compromises for the benefit of a free app.
Ipevo Whiteboard (free) - Another decent free app that does most of the above. It has a good range of pen and annotation tools, including interactive whiteboard features like a ruler, protractors and spot light tools. Images can be added, but only as backgrounds which we found was a bit of a limitation. It wont allow you to shrink, rotate or manipulate the images which is frustrating if you want to have something besides an image.
Keynote - (free) Apple’s Powerpoint equivalent offers lots of fantastic options for using as a demonstration tool. You can add text and images with all the usual format options that you’d expect from a presentation tool, but it also includes hand drawn annotations, a huge selection of shapes, symbols, icons, graphs and the ability to add custom animations to objects on the page. While Keynote doesn’t include screen recording as a built in option, once you have prepared your slides, you can hit presentation mode (go full screen) and flick through your pages (adding annotations or highlights if wanted) and record everything using the iPad’s Built in Screen Recording feature (available with iOS13 and above). You can easily create screen recordings (with or without sound) of anything you are doing on your iPad. This can be accessed from the Control Centre once enabled. Find out more here.

All this functionality and the fact that it's free, makes Keynote our app of choice and the one that will be used in the lesson guides below. If you have older iPads that will not run iOS 13 or above, consider one of the other choices instead as you will not have the built in screen recording function on your device.

Video Editing

iMovie (free) - Preinstalled on most iPads, iMovie is still the best free video editor for mobile devices. Easy to use and packed with features, it's an essential part of movie making on an iPad.

Full Computing Glossary

Take a look at our full computing glossary, plus key vocabulary for each age group.

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Key computing vocabulary for this unit

Annotate - add notes to (a text or diagram) giving explanation or comment.

Capture - (in film or animation) To take a photograph or video recording.

Digital content – any media created, edited or viewed on a computer, such as text, images, sound, video (including animation), or virtual environments, and combinations of these (i.e. multimedia).

Edit - To change, add or remove elements in a piece of work (usually to improve it).

Export - The opposite of importing and a computing command that usually means saving or sending a file, or part of a file, to a specific new location. It also often allows changing the file format as it’s saved. For example, a Photoshop image could be exported as a PDF document or different images types (PNG, JPEG etc). You might also export content between apps on an iPad. A piece of music could be exported to iMovie to use as a soundtrack for a video.

Frame - A single drawing or image captured as a photograph in an animation or video. When multiple frames are played in sequence the illusion of motion is created.

Import - A computing command that usually means allowing a user to bring in a file, or part of a file into another application so they can be combined. For example, an image could be imported into presentation slides, or art software to use as a background.

Layer - In sound or video terminology, layering is the stacking of media elements in a project timeline to enable playback of multiple elements simultaneously.

Narrate - deliver a spoken commentary to accompany (a film, broadcast, piece of music, etc.)

Timeline - a graphical representation of a period of time. Used in video and sound editing to order and arrange the separate elements of a project.