Equipment for recording videos

For the blended learning work I have been doing, I set up a little recording station and try to blast through a sequence of short videos in a row. It takes a bit of time to set up the equipment and I find that it’s best to get a few done together. It means the narrative between the videos is more fluid and it means I don’t have to switch into my video persona as often!

The list of equipment I use includes:

• A tripod supporting a handheld HD video camera
• A chopping board or other firm flat surface(!)
• A laptop with screencasting software (Promethean’s ActivInspire) and video editing software (Corel’s VideoStudio Pro X5)
• A graphics tablet (Wacom’s Bamboo model)
• Scrap paper, scissors, felt-tips
• Mathsy things like Numicon, flippy numbers, place value blocks, etc.

For some tutorials, I record screencasts and for others I record video using a tripod – this is because the two formats serve different purposes. While the screencasts are useful for writing out working workings, showing animations and some mathematical procedures, the camera recordings are better for focussing on a pair of hands manipulating something physical, like cards, cubes, tiles, etc.

Here’s a mosaic of one half-term’s worth of tutorials.