Simple ways to caption: Camtasia

If you are fortunate enough to have a copy of Camtasia from TechSmith, you can use that to make your videos accessible to all with captioning.  The software is about $300 for a copy, but, it's worth it. I have used it for several video projects and the outcome is very professional.

The people at Techsmith have established excellent tutorials for their product and there is a section devoted to captioning.  It has a speech to text capability, syncing with a script as well as manual caption editing.

Techsmith does have a free trial of the software to see how to use it and if you want to buy it. I encourage you to download it and make a video lesson. Don't forget your captions, they are a very important step to making a video accessible for students who need to read subtitles instead of just listening.

Simple ways to caption: iMovie

I have talked a few times lately about captioning video to make them accessible for all learners.   I am not a Mac user, but, iMovie is built into each Mac computer and it can be used to caption videos.   I saw it done at a conference recently, and it looked fairly simple to do.   Apple has made a whitepaper with directions on how to do this.  You can find one by clicking this link.

I think it is important to remember that all students need to be able to have accessible videos.  Not all students can learn my merely hearing, some need to read that is spoken to them.  Captioning is a simple step that will benefit your students.

iMovie does take a little longer to caption than using YouTube, but, it can be done prior to the upload and be built in directly to the video. One step that is different than editing captions in YouTube is the direct typing of word for word content.   YouTube does find the content for you and you just edit. With iMovie, you will have to type as you listen.  The steps are a little extra, but it is worth it in the end.

Simple ways to caption: Movie Maker

When it comes to accessibility, captioning is by far one of the best ways to make a flipped classroom an accessible classroom to many learners.   Microsoft Movie Maker has the capability of placing captions over video clips to help the visual learner.   I have located a tutorial on Microsoft's website that explains the process of using Movie Maker's title/ credit component. You merely place the credit over the video.  You can see the tutorial here.

I have used Movie Maker often for putting together tutorials for students and staff. It is an easy program to use and the fact that it is free makes it even better. It is available on every PC computer and if it doesn't appear, it can be downloaded to your Windows PC.  It isn't compatible with an IOs system.

There are several good tutorials for Movie Maker in general on YouTube as well.  It's worth looking into.

Simple ways to caption videos: YouTube

I recently went to a training for technology leadership certification and one of the things we talked about for a great amount of time was accessibility for all students. 

I've decided I'm going to take a little bit of time to talk about captioning because that is one of the ways to make things accessible for students.  There are so many teachers flipping their classes, but do they realize that not all kids can follow the aural cues and watch the video along side?   Some of them need to have their videos captioned because they learn better by reading than merely listening. I want to take a little time today to show you how to use YouTube to caption.  I have found this is one of the easiest ways to make it work. 

1. First of all, if you have a video uploaded to YouTube, captioning is simple.  Follow these steps:

1. Open your YouTube video manager where you see the list of YouTube videos.

2. Choose the video you plan to edit and click Subtitles and caption from the Edit pull down menu.

2. 3. Choose English as the original language of the video and it will regenerate a page that has the 4th image on it, When you click the English that has a green dot next to it, you will see a page of text generate.  This is your captioning.   

4.  You need to click the edit button and it will permit you to change the text to what it needs to be.  Sometimes, text is generated that doesn't make perfect sense, but with a few keystrokes, you can change it to make it correct.  Hearing impaired will tell you they need to just get the gist and not the entire context.  Another note:  You may want to add cues that relate to the sounds as well. (applause, music, laughter) as this helps the hearing impaired understand why there is no captioning for a long period of time.

5.  Once you have edited the text that came in, you merely publish it and then you will notice that the video has text the next time it is played.

This is a free service and really doesn't take that long to complete.  You will be able to help many students who learn better from words than audio.  It is a great way to meet the accessibility needs of all students.

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Reaching all learners

Not all students are created equal.  I was reminded this last week at my TLC cohort training.   (Technology Leadership Certification).  Part of the training involved a group from Indiana that focuses on students with disabilities both physically and mentally.  Some of the kids they deal with are blind, deaf, learning disabled.   It helped me realize the need for modified and differentiated instruction to reach all kids.  The presenters shared with us several tools that we can use to help us reach the learners. Some things are way cool and I never expected how easy they are to do.

For starters, if you are using your phone and have a document open in google, you can talk right into the document and it will sync.   iPhones definitely work and android phones that have Google Keyboard or voice to text installed on them let it work.  It might use data plans, but, if you have a student who is learning disabled, you can have them create a doc for notes and you can record your lesson right onto the doc for them for later reference. Isn't that an easy way to help kids be more successful?   One thing to note, you will have to be in a BYOD school or have a policy in place that permits kids to access a wireless network at school.  (Maybe even a guest network that students can access that gives them limited permissions.)

Another thing to remember is captioning videos.  If you are going to flip your class, caption your lesson.  If you upload your lesson to YouTube, it will auto caption for you, but you will have to edit it to assure it is the right information.   You can also use the free software on your computer, iMovie or Movie Maker, depending if you are on PC or Mac. Either way, that simple step, which through YouTube takes only a little extra time will help that student in need of text be more successful.  It's hard to watch a video if only audio is present.  Some learners need just a little more help, and that could be a caption.

The next few posts I do will provide a few tools that can be added very simply to your computer or to Chrome to help make a learner's life a lot easier.  Check back for more.