Creating animated videos is a fantastic way to capture students’ attention and make learning more engaging. Whether you’re illustrating a complex concept, telling a story, or providing instructions, animated videos can bring your lessons to life in a way that static images or text can’t. Teachers can create animated videos to share with students, and students can take on the role of creator, too.
With the right tools and a bit of creativity, you can create compelling animations that enhance your teaching and support your students’ learning. And after trying it out yourself—perhaps for a morning message or explanation of a vocabulary word—you can help students make their own animated videos to capture their learning.
In today’s new blog post, I have seven practical tips to help you get started with making animated videos for your classroom.
7 Teacher Tips for Making Animated Videos
This blog post has a dual purpose of setting you up for success to make a video to share with students and provide tips you can use with student creators. Let’s jump into the list!
Choose a simple tool
The spotlight tool we’ll look at in today’s post is Adobe Express. I love their “Animate with Audio” option and I’ve done some work with the Adobe Education team over the past few years. You might have even caught some of my pictures from leading a training for educators at their Times Square office since I love the view!
There are a few other options you might explore for making animated videos with students. For example, you might use Scratch to have students create animations using coding skills. You could also explore the iPad app Stop Motion Studio, which was a super popular option when it first came on the scene.
Create your own background
Students can draw a picture to upload and use as a background for their video or create an AI-generated image. If you already use generative AI tools with your students, they might make their own images. Or you might create pictures based on prompts your students have submitted. If you’re curious about AI images, this podcast episode provides some insight.
Keep it short
If you’ve attended a workshop with me on formative assessment, I often share the reminder to keep student videos short. This recommendation is because you want to make sure you actually have time to review the video clips students use to demonstrate their learning. When students create animated videos, you’ll want to ensure they take the extra planning time to outline or script what they will say.
Add captions
Whether you or your students are creating animated videos, adding captions makes sure it is easier for everyone to interact with your content. I mentioned Adobe Express earlier in the post, and I love their quick action option for adding captions. I use this tool all the time when creating videos for my podcast. You can see some examples on this page of Reels – basically, all of the captions are generated with this tool.
Translate captions
To take it one step further, you might even translate the captions for your videos. I saw Adobe Education’s Jesse Lubinsky share this strategy at an event last year, and it was very impressive. After you create captions using the quick action tool I mentioned earlier, you can open up the video in Adobe Express and tap the Translate button at the top of the screen.
Attach to a QR code
If you or your students have created a video, you can take the link to the published video and turn it into a QR code. Some tools automatically publish videos online so that you can access the link that way. Alternatively, you might have a video file and add that to a cloud-based tool like Dropbox or Google Drive. Then, you can use that link to create a QR code. This blog post takes you through the steps to make these black-and-white scannable squares.
Make a short link
Instead of QR codes, you might decide to create a short link that someone can type in. This is a great option if you want to share a video with students, but they can’t scan QR codes with their devices. There are a few ways to make short links, but I usually use Bitly (with a free account).
I hope these quick tips will set you up for success for your next animated video exploration. Whether your goal is to make engaging and educational animated videos that captivate your students or empower them as creators, there are so many options. The key is to start simple and gradually add more elements as you become more comfortable with the process.
Don’t forget to check out the second edition of my book, EdTech Essentials: 12 Strategies for Every Classroom in the Age of AI 2nd Edition. I dedicate an entire chapter to the concept of “Create.” This chapter explores various creative technologies, including animated video tools. It also offers additional strategies to integrate them into your teaching practice.
Do you have tips for creating animated videos? Send me an email and tell me all about it – just reply to one of my free Monday newsletters.
