Save time with Splicd to create video excerpts

The power of YouTube is pretty tough to deny. Even in school districts where the site is blocked, teachers find and store or share great clips to use with their journalism students. What always bothered me, though, was finding a somewhat useful video with one true gold nugget buried deep in the middle. Do I really want my students to spend six minutes watching something just to see that golden 30 seconds?

Education experts urge us to keep videos and movie excerpts as short as possible, and I agree – but I just didn’t know how to get the part I wanted without timing it. I used to watch the clip in advance, noting the time, and then would “fast forward” to that spot during my lesson in class. The process was usually clunky and awkward, which is why I got so excited recently when I learned about Splicd.

The “Get straight to the point” slogan says it all. Copy/paste the YouTube URL and enter the start and stop times of the excerpt you want. Splicd does the rest, making a tidy clip of just the part you need. The result is a URL you can share. No editing for you, no wasted time for your students. And since this makes YouTube clips infinitely easier to show in class in a meaningful way, here’s a refresher of some best practices:

– Tie clips to essential questions and key concepts rather than showing “for fun” or filler.

– Be sure to test your clip ahead of time to make sure links are still valid and cut as you expected.

– Introduce the clip and provide a logical transition from teaching to clip and back again.

Happy splicing

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