Google Vids: Fast, Polished Videos for Student Projects

[00:00:00] Shanna Martin: Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free. Piece of two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher, technology instruction coach from Magistrate,

[00:00:31] Fuzz Martin: and I'm our producer and husband, Fuzz Martin here to help you figure out how to use AI to create vids for your kids unless you're school for bids.

[00:00:41] Shanna Martin: Okay, that works. Oh my.

[00:00:46] Fuzz Martin: It's more created with your kids, I guess. It's with your kids. Yeah.

[00:00:48] Shanna Martin: Yeah, yeah.

[00:00:50] Fuzz Martin: Um,

[00:00:51] Shanna Martin: yeah. Episode 2 24. 2 24. It's our last episode for the year of,

[00:00:57] Fuzz Martin: it's the last

[00:00:58] Shanna Martin: 2025. Yeah.

[00:01:00] Fuzz Martin: So 2 24 is the last of two. 20. 2025. 2025.

[00:01:04] Shanna Martin: Yeah. We are a mix of, should have done one more, the holiday chaos. Mm-hmm.

[00:01:11] Shanna Martin: And, surviving. We are all surviving at this point. I have two more days of school. Some schools are already out at this point. Some schools have to go extra. But here we are.

[00:01:22] Fuzz Martin: Here we are,

[00:01:23] Shanna Martin: and we are talking about Google bids. I know I don't talk about Google tools very often 'cause I feel like lots of people cover Google Tools, but I've been using Google Vid so often in my class in the last couple of weeks that I figured we needed to talk about it.

[00:01:37] Shanna Martin: Yeah, it's

[00:01:37] Fuzz Martin: really cool technology. It's

[00:01:39] Shanna Martin: so fun.

[00:01:39] Fuzz Martin: It's really fun. It's. It's amazing. It's so fun how, how well it works and how quickly it works.

[00:01:46] Shanna Martin: Yes. So like highlights of Google bid, so obviously it's in the Google Suite, and we'll talk a little bit about how, depending on if you have a paid version of Google or your workplace versus your regular Google account, what that will look like.

[00:02:01] Shanna Martin: And I know some people don't have Google accounts, so. You need a, you have to have like the Google setup in order to use Google vi,

[00:02:08] Speaker 3: right?

[00:02:09] Shanna Martin: But it's so easy to make things look professional. It uses ai. It's really, really fun. We'll give some examples. You can be creative. You can be creative, your students can be creative.

[00:02:20] Shanna Martin: Their account looks a little different than like a teacher account would. It is a great way to work on AI prompting. So when you're teaching students. We've been, I've been working a lot with my students on how to like cite AI use and make sure that you're acknowledging that this is not yours, but also how to prompt it to get exactly what you're looking for.

[00:02:39] Shanna Martin: So it's a great way to practice that. All the Google tools, like anything, it saves lots of time and it also saves right and directly into your Google Drive. It's really easy to edit. It works with your slideshow that already exist. And there's again, different versions depending on the type of account you have, but there are so many fun, cool tools to use when it comes to creating with Google Vids.

[00:03:02] Shanna Martin: So let's start with, well, we could start with this morning, what I ended up showing you, which was kind of funny. So if you go into your waffle. You scroll down, you'll find the vids button that's like a purple document with a play button on it. That's where you find vids. Then depending on the type of account for vids, you have, there is a, there's an extra one if you have a paid account.

[00:03:25] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. And then it's a. That one's labeled differently. It's like a 3.1 version. Yeah. Then they have the a i avatar, so you can choose this. Once you go to create, you can convert slides, you can record like doing a Screencast. Mm-hmm. And it will set it all up for you. You can upload other media from your Google Drive.

[00:03:48] Shanna Martin: They have great, easy to use templates that you can use with your students. And then you can storyboard, or it's just a blank video where you can create a video from scratch. Those of you that used, a lot of like video creation things out there. And a lot of them have gone from being free.

[00:04:03] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. To then now paid. So this is a great way that if you have a Google account, that your kids can make videos in your classroom. So what I've been having my students do lately is go to the Convert Slides version. So we're gonna start with that one. So once you your choice, you can click convert slides.

[00:04:19] Shanna Martin: Now what happened this morning is I was showing our family how cool this was and. Our daughter likes to make fun. Co pop Google slideshows. Yep. So few episodes back I talked about how you can fun co pop yourself. Mm-hmm. And you can create little fun co pop people. Yes. Like design them and create them and save them.

[00:04:42] Shanna Martin: So she likes to fun co-op herself and everybody in our household. Mm-hmm. And then put them into Google Slides and make stories. She's 10. So she makes like Google slide stories of fungo pops. Anyway, so I took her slideshow that she had created and shared with me, and then I put it into the build from Google Slides version.

[00:05:06] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. Clicked on it. And what's great is that you just click the presentation you've already made, you click select and then Google takes like maybe 30 seconds. Make sure you can choose all the slides you wanna use. You can turn on or off. You can turn on the AI voiceover script and background music.

[00:05:28] Shanna Martin: Just toggle it over. Mm-hmm. Click import, and then it takes your Google slideshow and makes it into a movie.

[00:05:36] Speaker 3: Yep.

[00:05:37] Shanna Martin: And what's cool about that is whatever text you have in there, it takes it and bases the slideshow. Yes. On yes. Your text. So my students have been using this and I'll kind of talk about how I'd adapt there a little bit.

[00:05:54] Shanna Martin: But you, it will like give you then the voiceover line on the bottom. It will give you the audio line and it's, it's a slide deck, but it turns into a movie so you can edit any of it. So if you don't like the a, a overview, you can take it off. If you love the background music, you can keep it. If you wanna change it, you have the option on the left, right hand side.

[00:06:16] Shanna Martin: On the right hand side, you can click voiceover. You can change the text. That's being said, you can change your voice over a person. So there's a narrator, an educator, a teacher, a persuader, an explainer, a coach, and a motivator. You can choose then, which voice you would rather hear voicing over your video.

[00:06:36] Shanna Martin: You can add images, you can add uploads, so you can change anything that the AI overview did to make this into a little short 47 second movie that has created, so it will tell the story in Create. Now, what my students have been doing is we've been researching national parks. So what I've had them do is go in to convert slides.

[00:07:01] Shanna Martin: Now what we have found though. Because of how student accounts are set up? Yes. They don't have the option of the ai. Overview, like they can't put the voiceover in and they can't put the music in as an ai, like that's those settings that we have in my district. But they can take their slideshow and it still makes it a movie.

[00:07:22] Shanna Martin: They can do their own voiceover so they can record and they can do the audio over their own slideshow. Um, they can add additional images, they can add different text. They can put all of those pieces in shapes and colors, and so they can then take their slideshow, do their own voiceover, and then make that into a movie, which is really cool.

[00:07:43] Shanna Martin: So I've set up all my students making slideshows, and then once we've edited that and that's exactly what they need to have for class, then they turn them into a movie.

[00:07:53] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:54] Shanna Martin: You do have the option of making a direct movie into Google Vids. So when you have the choice, like when you're setting it up, you can click just blank vid.

[00:08:04] Shanna Martin: Yep. And it gives you a full working screen to start from scratch, which is awesome. Mm-hmm. Like kids can make movies about any topic in class that you want them to. I will say as a teacher, having them make a video for a presentation, I had each student get up, they had a little note card, they still had to gimme the background.

[00:08:23] Shanna Martin: They had to practice their eye contact in standing up. But having every presentation be a minute or less, I got so much done, so much faster than when we have every kid spending three to five minutes talking. Mm-hmm. Just because. Like flow of the classroom. It just went so much faster. Everything was loaded in Google Classroom, hit play, next kid stood up, they explained their stuff, sat back down, played their video.

[00:08:48] Shanna Martin: So it was another way for them to practice presenting. And it was super engaging for my students 'cause they were like, oh, like that was really interesting 'cause they were engaged. 'cause it was in a movie format versus a just slideshow presentation.

[00:09:02] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

[00:09:03] Shanna Martin: So there's a lot of cool things.

[00:09:05] Fuzz Martin: And you can also have them use the, the Google bids where they.

[00:09:09] Fuzz Martin: Can do a demonstration right. From, you know, like demonstrate their learning on screen, do like a, a walkthrough with a voiceover and, and that way too, if you ever wanted to like, have them do virtual pre presentations or those kind of things, that could be better.

[00:09:24] Shanna Martin: Absolutely. So one of the other options, 'cause you do have flexibility in this, if you click, if you choose the record version mm-hmm.

[00:09:30] Shanna Martin: It's record yourself, your screen, or both. If you go into that version, the template looks a little different. And so it has a camera. It has camera and screen. Screen or audio. And so as a teacher, this would be a great way if you're setting up a project or information, or if you have to teach virtually or if you have sub plans.

[00:09:51] Shanna Martin: Like if you can't be there and you need a sub in your class, you wanna quick explain everything, it does a very easy, like Screencast. Mm-hmm. But students can definitely do that as a presentation as well, where they're in the, kind of the bottom of the screen and then they can present as well. We use this version also for my students.

[00:10:08] Shanna Martin: Who is deaf. So she's able to sign her presentations and so she's in the corner with the video, and so she's able to do her signing and her presentation, then her interpreter does the voiceover. Sure. So, also is awesome to support students in whatever capacity that they need it. And so there's just so many ways to use Google Vids beyond just presenting in the classroom.

[00:10:31] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. They have a huge collection of templates. From like my makeup tutorial to, tech gadgets, to just all kinds of cool, just like backgrounds. And they're set up, well, a new family announcement. There's just all kinds of cool that you can work from a template so you're not starting from scratch.

[00:10:49] Shanna Martin: That also you can choose as a teacher or just livening up your presentations or putting your content in. You can pick and choose which scenes that you wanna use. So they'll give you templates, but you don't have to use everything. You can pick and choose. And there's just the tools that are on the right hand side where they work.

[00:11:06] Shanna Martin: Like any sort of kind of slide deck, so like text and stack images and templates and all that kind of stuff. And you have access to all of that.

[00:11:13] Fuzz Martin: I use the AI avatar one, two. Transcribe, uh, transcripted some of the stuff that you were saying earlier. And then Google Vids is a great way to create AI prompting in order to get exactly what you're looking for and see that's,

[00:11:28] Shanna Martin: look at

[00:11:28] Fuzz Martin: that.

[00:11:28] Fuzz Martin: It's an avatar with a little guy and it says tech tools for teachers on it.

[00:11:32] Shanna Martin: And that's in the paid version? Yeah. Or the. Like my district has it. Yes. Your office has it. So that's like if,

[00:11:38] Fuzz Martin: but it's not in the free version. It's

[00:11:39] Shanna Martin: not in the regular Connect to your Gmail account version. Yes. Yet, yes. Amazing.

[00:11:44] Shanna Martin: But it's one of those things where, did a thank you to educators putting that into, and you could recreate that a bunch of different times. So if you didn't like the look of what they chose, you can change the background. You can change whatever you can. Practice your AI prompting for that one and continue to keep editing until it's exactly what you want it to be.

[00:12:01] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:12:02] Shanna Martin: So there's just so many options with Google Vids that allows your kids to liven up their presentations, and to engage each other. And again, because some of those, I can't tell you how many of the actual, the tools that I use for kids making movies are now paid or gone or changed. Mm-hmm. That I'm thrilled that I can have kids.

[00:12:22] Shanna Martin: Create again. They can do stop motion films super easy with Google Vids. If you drop it in as a Google slideshow, like they can make stop motion films with it and videos for presenting information. It's a great way for, like face classes to do step-by-step cooking. There's just so many different ways that you can incorporate this into your classroom.

[00:12:44] Shanna Martin: And again, it connects to all of your Google Drive pieces. So if you're able to play around with it, even as just a teacher to make your lessons engaging for your students mm-hmm. Or supporting if you can't be there. That's super awesome. It also has all of the, all of the usual accessibility features and all of the links into your Google Slides stuff that you would normally have.

[00:13:06] Shanna Martin: So all of that is, available as well. So everything is in Google vs. That you could possibly need. And the tools are very familiar 'cause they look just like your regular Google tools would look. You also have the option, I should highlight your video size so you can choose to run them portrait or landscape, if that is something that you need as well.

[00:13:27] Shanna Martin: So you do have all of those options in Google bids as well.

[00:13:32] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. Wanna send a weekly, staying home to? To families.

[00:13:37] Shanna Martin: Yeah. Like weekly updates to families, parents, if you have holiday programs. Mm-hmm. And you wanna quick highlight, I know certain things are depending on if your students are allowed to be in it, but if it's just you in the video making it mm-hmm.

[00:13:47] Shanna Martin: You can do that. You can highlight what kids are working on in your class. There's just so many different ways you could Yeah. Build in Google bids and it's so easy to use.

[00:13:55] Fuzz Martin: Exactly.

[00:13:56] Shanna Martin: And so fun. It's so fun. Mm-hmm. Very fun. So there you go. Google bids. Little highlight of a Google tool I usually stay away from, but this one's just too cool not to talk about.

[00:14:08] Shanna Martin: And we are finishing off 2025. We are heading into 2026. It's gonna be great.

[00:14:17] Fuzz Martin: It is gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Great year.

[00:14:22] Shanna Martin: So I hope everyone looking up,

[00:14:23] Fuzz Martin: everybody,

[00:14:24] Shanna Martin: I hope everyone enjoys your break. Take some time, take a breather. Make a video of yourself. Taking a breather, it'll be great. Yes, exactly.

[00:14:34] Shanna Martin: Thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Blue Sky Threads, Facebook, Instagram at Smart nwi. And if you wanna get more information on the links to the technology discussing this episode, visit smart w.com. If you like sports show, please consider buying me a coffee or two visit buy me.

[00:14:54] Shanna Martin: coffee.com/smart wi or visit smart wi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes starting in the new year. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.

[00:15:07] Fuzz Martin: The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the Smart N website are those in the author Shannon Martin and not a your employer.

[00:15:14] Fuzz Martin: Prior to using any of the technologies discussed in this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as we've described. We sure hope they do, and we sure hope you have a great holiday. Thanks for listening.