Explaining Understanding with Clips

Clips is one of my favourite apps to use across all curriculum areas. I love how easy it is to bring teaching and learning to life by combining videos, images, animated posters, text (including Live Titles), filters, stickers, emojis, voice recordings and music. 

For teachers, it allows us to present content and explain new concepts in a range of engaging and accessible ways. For students, it supports a richness of expression that reaches far beyond traditional written responses. And because it’s so flexible and easy to use, it’s a powerful tool for students of any age or cognitive ability.

In the example I’d like to share, students with additional learning needs had been learning about the Indigenous people of Australia and the importance of their history, culture and traditions. Students learned about the story of the Australian Aboriginal flag, what each of the colours in the flag are designed to represent and why the flag is a key symbol of Aboriginal Australian identity and pride. They then used voice, emojis and text labels to explain their understanding.

These are the steps we took to create the videos:

Although this particular activity was aimed towards explaining understanding of the composition of a flag, a similar approach could be used in many different contexts, such as:

  • Labelling and explaining parts of a plant/animal/cell/machine etc. in a Science lesson;
  • Classifying angles, identifying properties of shapes or illustrating simple number problems in a Maths lesson;
  • Bringing procedural, information or persuasive texts to life in Literacy.

When emojis and stickers are used purposefully to annotate images or videos, they can serve as powerful visual supports which help students to forge connections and make better sense of their learning. Clips videos also allow us to capture students’ verbal explanations, reasoning and reflections for assessment purposes; recording their understanding of key concepts and highlighting any misconceptions they might have. 

And the opportunity to select and combine a variety of visual, textual and auditory elements gives our students more autonomy in the way they choose to express their learning.

These are just a few reasons why Clips is one of my favourite tools for students to explain their understanding.


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6 replies

October 20, 2022

Fantastic Laura, I love your use of dictation, Live Titles and how you talked about choosing purposeful images/emoji and colours that link to learning! Awesome accessibility for learners and connections to consolidating and sharing learning. Thank you! :0)

October 24, 2022

Thanks for the feedback! Sometimes the simple things are the most effective... especially when it means that everyone can contribute their ideas. 😊 And I love the idea of using Clips to give feedback on writing samples too!

October 21, 2022

Thanks for this wonderful post, Laura! I love the idea of annotating images and video with emojis for students to demonstrate their understanding. Such a great idea for learners of all ages!

October 22, 2022

I love Clips too, so many possibilities. My favourite one is teachers creating feedback on writing samples for students.

October 27, 2022

Laura, thank you so much for sharing this incredible resource. I really enjoyed how you used all of the different elements to support visual learners.

October 29, 2022

Thanks Laura, awesome content and resources you have shared!

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