Welcome to Day 15 of the 2024 Appvent Calendar!
Today’s Appvent entry is shared as a recommendation by a long-standing friend of Mark’s and former colleague of Ronan’s, Steve Bambury.
A multi-award-winning educator and leader, Steve has worked in education for over 20 years and has recently rejoined JESS Dubai as Head of Digital Learning and Innovation.
Known for his legendary knowledge around impactful apps, platforms, and tools; always keeping pedagogy, outcomes and innovation at their heart, Steve is a multi-GESS award-winning educator who always has his pulse on what works with technology to support teaching and learning. His recommendation for today’s platform is HeyGen; a versatile platform that offers AI-augmented video creation and translation tools…
I was first shown HeyGen by the wonderful Sabba Quidwai whilst she was over in Dubai last month.
It was the app’s Ai-powered video translation that initially caught my eye but a deeper dive lead to an exploration of the AI avatars and brainstorming around ways this technology can be leveraged into learning scenarios.
Educational Benefits
Whilst not designed explicitly for use in schools, the creation of eLearning content is a core focus for HeyGen, so it’s absolutely a platform that could be harnessed by both (older) students and staff.
In particular, if you work in a school that produces a lot of video content for students or CPD videos for staff, it could indeed be a worthwhile addition to your edtech arsenal.
The translation tool makes the app even more relevant for educational institutions. With support for over 150 languages, HeyGen allows you to dub existing video content into other languages using the original voices as the source in an impressively realistic fashion. Since we work in an international school where our students come from a huge range of places around the world, and in a country where Arabic is the national language, HeyGen is an ideally suited tool. Hearing senior members of our staff suddenly speak in fluent Arabic for the first time was one of those “wow” moments that AI has become so good at crafting. Naturally, this makes HeyGen a great tool for inclusion, especially with EAL students,
Practical Application
Beyond producing translated content that you might want to use with the broader school community, HeyGen also has great potential for eLearning content across the entire curriculum and for pretty much any subject area. Don’t need translation? HeyGen has other tools that you might find just as useful, AI avatars for example – these can be used as a digital surrogate for staff who are uncomfortable appearing on video. These lifelike avatars can become your de facto host for CPD content and negate the need for expensive, professional recording equipment in the process.
HeyGen touts a 50% reduction in video production time and an 80% reduction in production costs (as compared to professionally made content mind you – not stuff just filmed on your phone and chopped up in iMovie!)
Of course, there’s scope here for some of the older students to get involved and use the AI avatars to create a range of learning artefacts. Once again this is particularly apt for us here in the UAE where some students are not allowed to appear on camera due to religious reasons (or parental request). Being able to provide a digital alternative for such students is superb and it sends me down memory lane to the early days of iPads in the classroom, using apps like Tellagami and Chatterpix to bring avatars to life as a part of multimedia learning projects.
Considerations And Tips
There are of course a couple of things to consider if you’re thinking of using HeyGen. The translation is not perfect. Naturally, the clarity of the original audio is a key factor and if the speaker has been recorded with a decent microphone or the audio has been mixed properly, the results will be better. One issue we hit during our initial testing was the mixing up of some word genders. As with all AI tools you have to take the time to check the outputted content carefully and ensure that accuracy levels are as high as possible. I think it’s safe to assume that they will continue to reiterate and refine the model.
As you might expect, HeyGen rolls with the classic Freemium model but the free version is actually pretty decent and probably enough for most educators. It allows you to create 3 videos per month, up to 3 minutes in length each, which you can export in 720p quality. If you munch through these too quickly you may need to look into a paid account which starts at $24 per month and allows for unlimited video creation (5 minutes max length mind you).
Summary
Whilst HeyGen is probably not something schools would roll out en masse it is a tool that members of the edtech or CPD teams (as well as administrative staff like the marketing team) could genuinely benefit from. It’s one of those apps where the wow factor catches your attention but the deeper you look, the more you realise that the underlying technology could prove incredibly beneficial for educational institutions in the coming years.
