Although live streaming is not a difficult task, there are some precautions that must be taken to ensure a good result:
✓ Secure your internet connection
A stable internet connection is vital for any live stream. Live education broadcasting is no excep-tion. You want to ensure that all of your content reaches your students without any glitches or latency issues. Blank screens, lagging, and sudden interruptions to the stream can be a source of great distraction for both students and educators.
✓ Plan your streaming space
Live video is all about location. Give your viewers something interesting to see, be it a home stu-dio with personal touches of decor or an attractive setting, such as a beautiful natural land-scape. Although you can transmit from anywhere, it is important to consider the configuration of your space and the message it gives to those who watch. First impressions can be critical to retain new viewers. It is worth making some effort to design and create a pleasant environment.
✓ First impressions on the camera
When recording live online classes, you stop being just a teacher to become a host. While record-ing, you need to keep your energy high to keep viewers engaged.
✓ Be your best self on video
Plan well what you are going to wear, so that it represents your message. As well as the decora-tion of the scene, your appearance and behavior must correspond to the topic of conversation. When you broadcast live, it is crucial to maintain eye contact with your audience in the same way that you would in a normal face-to-face conversation. You also want to ensure that your facial expressions and posture convey authority, conviction and interest. If you smile while speaking, you convey enthusiasm and confidence to your online audience.
Engage students
Simply sitting and watching videos can lead students to lose focus. Research[10] shows that when students take notes or answer guided questions while watching, they retain material better than students who watch passively. It is important to encourage interaction. Most viewers of live streaming want to be part of the action. Therefore, you need to give them chances and ways to interact and be engaged. Embedding questions in your instructional video using programs like Edpuzzle can improve student interaction and provide you with invaluable formative assessment data. Students should think of video-watching as a task they perform actively in order to learn.
[10] Buchner, J. (2018) How to create Educational Videos: From watching passively to learning actively, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327423659_How_to_create_Educational_Videos_From_watching_passively_to_learning_actively
You can also engage students by giving them video assignments.
Recording video presentations can be a good choice. Effective presentation and communication skills that students develop in school are among the most valuable assets they take into the work-place. Instead of driving students to work on a quiz or exams, you could ask them to create a video presentation on what they’ve learned. Asking students to do their assignments in the form of video can help them immerse themselves in a topic deeply and naturally. Video assignments make students work collaboratively. It exhibits student knowledge and effective communication skills. And with the rate at which educational technology is growing, creating an excellent video presentation is faster than ever. Recording video presentation has the following benefits for your students:
