Playposit is a hot new app that puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of teachers. It’s a platform for creating and distributing interactive video content. At the most basic level, Playposit allows you to add text, questions, surveys, and other media events to videos. That’s not all, however. It’s got a whole host of powerful features, including the ability to synchronize content across multiple devices, easily view statistics and details about your student’s’ responses to questions, and even provide unique video lessons that adapt themselves to be perfect for each individual student. Best of all, it’s easy for people with very little tech experience to use.
In order to understand the power of Playposit, consider the following example. You want to show students a video of a skit in a foreign language (let’s say it’s Spanish). Without Playposit, you’d probably show the skit and then have the students take a brief quiz.
With Playposit, you have a lot more control over the order of operations. Because you’re able to insert events at any point in the video, you can pause the skit and ask questions whenever you like. This enables you to ask questions about events immediately after they occur.
This is a pretty big deal on its own, but it’s a game changer in conjunction with another feature. Playpostit can jump around to different locations in a video based on the responses your students give to these questions. This allows you to provide remedial content or specific counterexamples in response to incorrect answers. It means that you can prevent students who don’t understand necessary prerequisite material from progressing too far into a lesson.These are just basic examples of things you can do. With a little bit of creativity, you’ll be able to achieve much more.
Let’s go back to the skit example to see this in action. After a couple lines, you might pause the video and ask your students to transcribe a somewhat difficult line of Spanish. If your students give an exemplary response, you can skip right to the next video. They’ve proven that they’ve mastered the material you’re quizzing them on.
If they don’t give the right answer, that’s fine. The skit might continue. After a few lines of dialogue, you can ask a multiple choice question. One possible response might simply back the video up so that the student can hear the line of dialogue again. Another (the right answer) might advance the video. Finally, two distractors (wrong answers) would jump to specific explanations of why each answer was wrong. After these explanations, students might be brought back to the original scene to try again.
GETTING STARTED
Playposit isn’t the only app to offer features in this vein. It is, however, one of the easiest to use. The interface is extremely simple and intuitive. If you’ve got any questions or you’re ready to try advanced stuff, however, Playposit offers free training sessions with live humans on their website. Here’s a basic guide to get you started with building your first interactive video lesson, or “bulb.”
STEPS TO GET STARTED
- You can import a video into Playposit directly from most internet sites, meaning you can effortlessly build a lesson around your favorite educational YouTube clip.
- Once it’s there, you can simply click on the timeline to add a question.
- While adding time-jumps based on question responses sounds complex. Playposit makes it pretty easy. All you have to do is click the gear next to a question response and select “jump” from the drop-down.
- From there, all you have to do is use the timeline to select where in the video you’d like to jump to!
There are a lot more features that Playposit has to offer, but you can build some pretty powerful lessons with just videos, questions, and jumps. Try it out for yourself!
INTERACTIONS WITH LMS
Playposit realizes that it’s not the only tool you’re going to use. Because of this, it’s designed to integrate seamlessly with almost every LMS. This means you can assign videos with Google Classroom or PowerSchool, let your students watch them with Playposit, and then get question responses and grades sent back to Classroom or PowerSchool automatically. This will save you a ton of work!
Playposit’s website has guides that can help you integrate it with your favorite LMS. Here’s the guide on integrating PlayPosit with Google Classroom: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPw92C7BEXkofz9-Knnu6nKhYH-ZnQUBaVOZkUEOmfc/edit
A COOL TOOL FOR SCHOOL
Playposit puts custom interactive videos within the reach of every educator. It’s simple, powerful, and incredibly easy to use. You can use Playpostit as part of a flipped classroom, as a way to supplement traditional lectures, or as a tool to host a synchronized playback of your video lessons. It’s not the most complex classroom app out there, but that’s one of its strengths. You don’t have to be a programmer to pick up Playpostit and make interactive “bulbs” for use in your classroom.While you do have to purchase it to unlock every feature, even the free basic version can be invaluable in creating custom video lessons. If you do choose to upgrade (or you can persuade your school to purchase an institutional package), Playpostit gives educators incredibly detailed statistics on how well their students are performing both individually and as a collective. If you think Playpostit might match your teaching style, it’s very much worth a try!
Antony Rappai 