
I wanted to involve my students in our weekly live stream more, but they can’t come and join me on camera, so we needed to think of something different. So what I am going to be doing is weekly challenges or games that involve them taking videos or pictures of themselves.
Students will post and/or send me the content, and I will show some, or all of it, during our live stream. This is a win-win because students also love seeing themselves and they will also feel more connected to and engaged with the live stream. Most weeks I will also enter them into a drawing to win a prize if they have participated.
EXAMPLE: This week it snowed here, so I started a “Snow Angel Challenge”. I ran outside in shorts and a t-shirt and made a snow angel, posted the video to Instagram. I told the students that whoever else did this would be entered into a drawing for a gift card (digital of course, lol).
During our live stream, I will show some of the videos, and then I will use one of the Sidekick apps to do a random drawing to pick the winner of the gift card, all on screen for them to see. (Sidekick found through DYM)
Next week I plan to ask them to just share something they have been working on while at home (15-second video or photo) – new dance moves, writing their own song, teaching their dog to roll over, building forts with toilet paper – whatever they want to share. Again, I will enter all participants into a drawing. The week after that I will do one of the social media games shared on this site and announce a winner on the live stream.
You can add whatever ideas you want, but the main idea is that you share student-created content on your live stream to engage them further with it.
*If you are wondering how I do all that on a live stream, well thankfully it’s not as hard as I thought it was a couple of weeks ago. I had no idea how to do any of that two weeks ago. I am using OBS Studio – FREE – and it does so much! switching live from camera on me, to a video, to a slide, etc. I also added an Elgato Stream Deck to have easier control of all that while I do the live stream by myself. I was using youtube videos to learn, which helped, but then I reached out to some young adults in our church and found multiple that knew how to use this stuff. I had one of them come to the office and show me, and I was off and running. My brain hurt a bit, but I pulled it off.
OBS Studio – https://obsproject.com
Elgato Stream Deck- https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck
I hope this helps, praying for you all!