Link to the site: https://web.microsoftstream.com Why As mentioned in my previous blog posts, video can be an incredibly powerful tool to engage students with learning, but as I have also mentioned the days of just putting a video on and expecting students to engage are long gone. At home your students will typically be watching telly at whilst using social media. They are now used to dealing with multiple sources of information at the same time. That’s why we need to look for tools that allows us to add interactivity to our videos. Following a recent update that is where Microsoft stream comes in useful, Especially if your school or college has a subscription to Office 365. What is it? Microsoft stream is a video hosting service similar to that of YouTube. One of the areas that puts off teachers from using video is the need to secure that video content and make sure it isn't shared with a wider audience. Microsoft stream can be set up to ensure that only appropriate people within the organisation can view it. Video has long been used as a way of helping people to learn and improve, whether that's sports men and women having their techniques recorded and then watching them back to identify areas for development. Or in education where teachers have their lessons recorded with tools such as a Swivl enabling them to look back and see how the students have engaged and how they've dealt with the different aspects of the lesson that they are teaching. Here is initial walk through guide to using MS Stream
It is easy to upload a video you can either click on the create menu and choose upload or click the upload arrow in the top corner. Then you select your video file you want to upload just as you would with YouTube and add a title and the description you can also set the sharing privileges for the video. To aid with accessibility a transcript is created automatically from the videos audio, I found this transcript to be very accurate but if you wish to edit it then that function is available by clicking on the pencil in the top left corner. Uploaded videos can be shared via a link via an email to authorised users typically those within your college or school domain or via an embed code. As mentioned earlier stream now has an interactive feature, that is accessed via the tab that sits to the left of the transcript tab in the top right corner. When you click interactivity you can add a Microsoft form to a specific point in the timeline as the video is played back the Form opens at that specific point within the video window and students can respond to the questions and then the video continues to play you can add multiple forms to a video. When could it be used. As I've already mentioned I can see this being a really great way to enable students to review a technique they've been doing lesson and see how they could improve it. With the comments feature you could even have peers provide feedback on how a technique could be improved. It could also be used at the start of a unit to ensure a consistent introduction across different classes. Or as some form of Summative or Formative assessment to check that students have understand what has been covered during a lesson.
For a visual summary of Streams features and ideas on how they could be used to support teaching and learning check out my infographic.
