The question that people email to me more than any other is some variation on “how do you get that circle in your YouTube videos?” There are two tools that I typically recommend for that. One is Screencast-o-matic and the other is Loom. Loom recently announced a bunch of updates including some that will be of particular interest to teachers like you and me.
Before addressing the updates that Loom announced, it’s important to note that Loom’s education product is free to teachers who have verifiable education email accounts (generally, .edu or .k12.state.us). Loom for Education gives teachers all of the features of Loom’s pro (paid) account.
The recent updates to Loom that teachers should note are viewer insights, shared libraries, and new screenshot options. The viewer insights will let you see how much a video was watched and let viewers respond with emojis to your videos. The shared libraries function lets you share videos with some, but not all viewers (this is in addition to password-protecting videos). And the Loom desktop app for Windows and Mac now lets you capture and share screenshots with just a couple of clicks.
The screenshot below contains Loom’s complete list of features available for free to teachers who register for Loom for Education.
Applications for Education
Loom’s viewer insights is a great middle ground between just making a video for students to watch and making a video with a whole bunch of attached questions to answer. In other words, it’s somewhere between Flipgrid and EDpuzzle.
I also love using Loom as a tool to help colleagues. Rather than writing directions to solve their tech problems I can use Loom’s Chrome and Gmail add-on to record and send a screencast directly from my inbox. Here’s a little video on how that works.
To learn more about making and teaching with video, enroll in my Practical Ed Tech course titled A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video.
