Creating a great welcome video

1. Write a scriptWrite a script for your video. Get all your ideas down. Be careful to keep it high-level; don’t go into too much detail here.

2. Organise it into sub-headings.Re-arrange and organise the information under sub-headings. (You can use these again for other courses you might run.)For example:• Who are the instructors?• Who’s it for?• What’s it about? • How’s it set out and designed?• How will learning take place in this

course?

3. Ask someone to read it.Let someone else read it and provide a bit of feedback, then re-edit.

4. Cue the script. Copy and paste your script into www.cueprompter.com Copy it into the white square, as shown in the image to the right.Add spacing in the copied script. This is time-consuming the first time around. Lines too close together make the cue prompter move too fast; lines too far apart and there’ll be long pauses while you wait for the script to move up as your speaking.Also, change the settings to suit. I go with the maximum prompter width and a big font size. Click Start prompter.

5. Practice reading the autocue.Your text should look like this Click ‘Forward’ once. Click it more than once and it will move up faster.

Minimise your window to half screen horizontally so that it sits in the top half of your screen.

6. Get ready to record. Now you’re ready to record yourself speaking with your smart phone camera and smart phone microphone. (Make sure the room you’re in is free from any noise, air conditioners or distractions). If you have a case, hook it over the top of your PC monitor, as pictured. If you don’t, stick it to the top of your monitor (where the built in webcam often is). Make sure it is in landscape, NOT portrait. Otherwise you’ll end up with a narrow video on playback. This doesn’t look so good.

7. Record it!Hit video record on your phone and start the cue prompter. Step back and read your script to the camera. You need to be at least a metre or two away so the camera doesn’t pick up your eyes reading from the script. (In the example video on the right, I used blu-tack to stick my phone to a wall.)

8. Review the video. If it looks good, well done! Post it to your class space.If you feel a bit wooden when reading back, try to ad-lib a little and perhaps use your hands to gesture. I prefer standing up rather than sitting down but it depends on you.

Think about your background! Not too bright or you’ll be a silhouette. Not too much going on either as it’ll be distracting. A blank white wall might be a little boring too. It’s good to think of your course content and what you think your students’ expectations will be of you as their teacher.