Helping School Districts, Teachers and Students Stay Connected During COVID-19 with Free Video Tools

By Business Wire On Apr 27, 2020

Vidyard announced today that it will provide all school districts and teachers with free, early access to its secure video messaging and screen sharing solution, Vidyard for Schools, to help school staff and teachers stay connected and productive while physical schools remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Staff and teachers of K-12 school districts have been impacted by widespread school closures; as have millions of students and parents. Maintaining effective lines of communication across all levels of the school system–from administrators and staff to teachers and principals–has become increasingly difficult, but the need for face-to-face connection and clear instruction remains. Staff and teachers within school districts need to communicate with each other now more than ever but are still figuring out how to do that effectively while remotely.

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Introducing Vidyard for Schools – Free Through August 31st

Vidyard’s video solution, Vidyard for Schools, is being offered to schools at no cost until August 31st, 2020. Early access to the cloud-based video creation, hosting, and management solution enables teachers and staff to record and share secure video messages and screen recordings for better engagement with students, parents, colleagues, and the community. Vidyard for Schools helps academic organizations:

Improve Distance Education: Enable teaching staff to easily record on-demand videos right from their web browser to explain concepts, provide clear instruction, and add a personal touch to student and parent communications.
Stay Connected with Staff: Create secure video messages and screen share recordings to deliver critical updates, guidance, and support as you and your staff adapt to remote teaching.
Keep Your Video Content Private: Choose whether videos can be watched by external audiences or secured for private viewing by fellow staff members within the district.

Administrators can also rest assured knowing that staff and teacher accounts are all centrally managed from one platform, with support for secure SSO-based authentication.

Enabling Teachers to Stay Connected with Students and Parents

Teachers can use Vidyard’s flagship video messaging app to easily record, secure, and share private videos with students and parents in just a few simple clicks from their web browser and email app.

For many students, the shift to distance education has removed critically important opportunities for face-to-face interaction, guidance, and instruction from the teacher. This is especially true for younger grades, where literacy skills are still developing and students need more verbal and visual guidance. Video tools for teachers make it easier to:

Provide instructions and guidance for assignments, which can be shared with parents who will help their children complete them.
Improve student comprehension by allowing them to rewatch videos or even adjust the playback speed to make sure they’re getting the full message

Using Vidyard, teachers can incorporate video into their teaching by recording lesson slides, assignment instructions, and announcements. Online videos make it easier for teachers to explain complex concepts and demonstrate solutions while personally connecting with their students.

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“Teachers have had to quickly adapt to distance teaching online, but many of them have only ever taught in a face-to-face capacity with limited support of technology,” says Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “While we know that there is no substitute for being in school, we’re here to help teachers and staff members use the power of video to mitigate the impact of this abrupt shift to online teaching and learning. We hope that tools from Vidyard can help the teachers and staff of school districts stay connected with students at a time when it matters most.”

With the recent shift to remote learning, many teachers have already adopted Vidyard’s free video capture and screen sharing tools so that they can offer video-based updates and instructions to remote students.

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