What are the best whiteboard explainer videos for the classroom?

There’s no question about videos taking over the internet. The recent statistics are quite staggering—1200% more shares are generated by social videos than text and images combined. Not only are people more likely to share videos but they’re spending increasingly more time watching them.

Businesses are already using those stats to their advantage. By tapping into explainer videos they increase awareness of their brands and products and they are in fact propelling the tendency.

Whiteboard explainer videos are a style of video that business have been utilizing effectively. Bringing back the memories of school with a natural and often jaw-dropping hand-drawn style, they communicate a clear purpose–educating their audience with a beautifully visualized story.

You might think that since it was derived from classrooms, whiteboard explainer videos would increase engagement in them as well. Whiteboard explainer videos can be beneficial for schools but we need to take a closer look at them.

Are whiteboard explainer videos good for the classroom?

In order not to mindlessly fall into the trap of video-mania, we need to point out the most important difference business and school practices. Even though marketers and teachers both want to educate their audience, they have a different goal. Businesses want to build awareness in the first place. At the most basic level companies use videos to increase the engagement with their brand. It’s key to be recognized and linked to a particular feel or  solution.

Schools on the other hand care more about the retention of the information. Let’s be frank, students spending a lot of time on something doesn’t mean they’re making real progress. Conversely, as a teacher you could use this insight to detect a potential obstacle in student’s learning. Teachers want to be sure they’re getting the right information at the right time to help students understand.

So the question is whether videos are better than static graphics at getting the information to students. As usual, there’s no clear answer. Some studies show that animation is clearly worse than graphics. Others say the opposite. The most recent ones tend to agree that more research is necessary.

You could think that as a teacher you’re doomed to rely on your hard earned experience. You could pitch one format or the other and just roll with the consequences. You could also prepare for both scenarios but that would take an immense amount of work. Or would it?

Interactive whiteboard explainer video toolkit

Let’s get a little bit meta. Hand-drawn animated explanations are something you can achieve in many different ways. You can order or record one by yourself using software solutions but that makes it difficult for changes down the road. Once produced it requires you to go through the same tedious process from the beginning in order to adjust for a particular class or student.

With Explain Everything you can bypass that problem. You are already on an interactive whiteboard. Recording a video is just another layer. You can add a set of necessary graphic materials or use a PowerPoint or Keynote deck you already have and record on top of them. This gives you the power to deliver a video that’s easy to adjust and change when needed.

What about the static part? You can attach interactive projects to your Explain Everything recordings so students can use them on their own. This means they not only get to watch a video. They are also able to fully explore it. With the infinite interactive canvas students can stop at any point of the recording and move around the project to find any information contained within.

That makes Explain Everything the essential toolkit for custom whiteboard explainer videos useful in all applications. After all, it’s you, the teacher, who knows best which medium will be the right one for your students. Why limit yourself to just one?