Screen Recording, Video Editing, and Social Media Skills

Have you ever asked yourself what skills one should have as a professional in the digital age? What are the most required skills in the business world of today?

Let’s imagine any profession. Say, a teacher. Teaching, nowadays, is much less about presenting the factual information, but rather about exploring new approaches to develop students’ skills required for the digital age we live in. We, as educators, should encourage more interdisciplinary approaches, and encourage content creation in any subject through digital outputs. Teachers have to be able to use digital technology for content creation and networking, as well as for educational development and innovation, and should also be able to provide applicable (project-based) learning experience for their students, which would enhance the acquisition of the factual information in a meaningful context.

There is a growing need, in the business world, for professionals who are cross-disciplined. Whatever the specific job one might apply for, companies would require a wider set of skills and a broader experience in their new hires. Therefore, teachers have to be aware of these demands, and help students develop the required skills.

Being an EFL teacher, I have recognised the need to extend the use of digital technology in my teaching, in order to help students develop their language skills by delivering quality contents for their digital outputs, through project-based learning, with cultural heritage as the basis for content creation. The program, Digital Meets Heritage, provides students with a set of digital tools and resources, encouraging them to deliver quality contents for their blogs, screencast videos, and social media promotions. Teaching English in a meaningful context, enhances students motivation, and increases their creativity and productivity. Thus, they practice their English language skills by researching and blogging about specific topics related to the world’s cultural heritage, and they develop their digital presentation skills while preparing their screencast videos and social media promotions.

What are Digital Presentation Skills?

Natalie Butler, UK Manager, WebEx, and Karen Moyse, MD, KineticFuture, explain why digital presentation skills are more important than ever… and why businesses need to adapt to compete.

“Virtual presentation skills are a relatively new phenomenon. Despite humble beginnings with the first, clunky video conferencing systems of the 1980s, it’s now commonplace for businesses to use digital media to communicate – for example web conferences, social networks, online video, podcasts and blogs. The reasons for this shift are threefold: concerns about the environment, the need to reduce the time and costs associated with meetings, the changing nature of technology and how a new generation of knowledge workers is communicating with each other.”

(Read more about it here.)

Therefore, developing students digital presentation skills in relation to any subject they study, including cultural heritage, is just an extra asset that the program Digital Meets Heritage offers. Students are encouraged to record screencast video tours of their blogs, and edit videos for further promotion of their digital outputs on YouTube, as well as other social media.

In this way we help students develop their digital presentation skills, and learn more about the world’s cultural heritage, through a project-based learning approach, while creating digital outputs that preserve and disseminate cultural heritage on a larger scale.

“Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.” Walt Disney

The following screencast video tour of my blog will give you a general idea of what the program – Digital Meets Heritage – is about, in a nutshell!

Digital Meets Heritage offers a wide set of skills for young learners aged 12-19, enabling them to develop their English language skills, in a setting where cultural heritage is the basis for content creation intended for students’ blogs, videos, and other digital products, which helps students develop their digital presentation skills, as the most important workplace skills of the 21st century.

All the resources used during the course are free and can be found on our Digital Meets Heritage Padlet.

With this, we would like to encourage all EFL teachers, as well as other educators, to take up this creative approach in delivering instruction related to the contents they teach by applying digital learning tools in their methodology, in order to stimulate relevant content creation through the use of digital technology, and thus enhance students’ understanding of the subjects they teach.

This approach increases the visibility of students’ work by promoting it online, which is another motivational factor for their full engagement in delivering quality contents, in order to meet the expectations of the audience they are targeting. In the long run, students are given an opportunity to extend their reach by promoting their contents to a global audience, thus achieving greater impact and scalability of their products.

All in all, this program offers an adventurous experience in exploring the world’s cultural heritage with the help of Google Arts & Culture and Google Expeditions VR, thus making it accessible to every child and every educator willing to expand the use of digital technology in their teaching practice.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything!“ George Bernard Shaw

Do not hesitate, dear teachers! The world is finally within our reach, and we have the chance to truly become our students’ heroes and guides in exploring the rich cultural heritage of our world, and in the process help them develop a wide set of skills that are required for successful professional development in our modern living.

Keep calm – and enjoy the exploration of the world’s cultural heritage with your students, by applying all these amazing resources, available for free, in your teaching practice.

If you have any questions regarding any of the activities covered with this program, I would me more then willing to answer.

Cheers!