Four years ago I attended the EMEIA ADE Institute in the Netherlands and was inspired beyond words. So any people, ideas and sparks to bring back home to my own school. But when I got back I realised that my excitement didn't change the reality that my colleagues didn't have time or headspace to fully embrace these new iPad ideas that I wanted to share.
After a few days I realised I needed to change my approach and decided to send a short video to my colleagues each Monday morning, in the hope that they might have a spare two minutes to watch and learn a new skill to level-up their iPad usage.
Over time these videos grew and took on a life of their own through Twitter and YouTube, extending my reach far beyond the walls of my school.
Fast forward four years and I've created over 400 QuickTip videos, which have been seen many millions of times by people around the world. From humble beginnings as 'teacher tips' they've grown to encompass 'normal people' too with a focus on iPad, iPhone and Mac. My little hobby has become a big part of my life and I'm ever grateful to people who've shared and recommended my videos to colleagues and friends over the years. They've truly become my One Best Thing.
But in the last twelve months I've realised a big problem. When people ask me "Hey Jacob, where can I find your videos?" I've never had a great answer. Some are on Twitter, most on YouTube (albeit spread across different channels) and some are elsewhere online. But never in a place I could fully control and advocate for.
Well, that changes today... I'm thrilled to introduce my One Best Thing: JacobsQuick.Tips
This website is the new home for all of my videos. It's the one link I can proudly share with people who ask and my hope is that it might be a link you'll consider sharing with your own schools and colleagues too.
It's taken me many months to manually add every single video to this new archive including titles, descriptions, rich metadata, app icons and even subtitles for every individual video. This means that everything is fully filterable and searchable by word, phrase or question. For instance teachers can tap the iPad filter and see only QuickTips that will be relevant to them. Even better they can then drill down to an App-specific level and find only iPad videos about Clips or Keynote, Freeform or Pages.
The last thing I want to draw attention to are the QuickTip Collections at the top of the page. These new resources offer a bite-sized playlist of videos in one go to quickly support and up-skill viewers in their chosen App. Going forwards I can now recommend people check out the "Getting Started with Classroom Collection on JacobsQuick.Tips" or perhaps they might want to explore the "A Complete Guide to Freeform Collection on JacobsQuick.Tips".
I'm so excited to see how this new resource develops and what the next four years bring for JacobsQuick.Tips!
February 13, 2024
Wow fantastic Jacob - quite an amazing task! I’ve often visited your quick tips usually when searching for an answer via Safari. Wonderful to have them in one place and in such a fantastic website. Thanks for this super OBT!
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