What I Learned Asking Kids for Feedback on My Educational Videos
Last Tuesday, after wiping peanut butter off the kitchen table, I hauled my laptop over to where Leo and Mia were picking at leftover granola bars. I’d spent three evenings that week filming and editing a new fractions video for the hybrid homeschool co-op I run, and I finally had a draft I was proud of. I’d used cereal as manipulatives, cut it to 8 minutes (the maximum attention span I’d read about for upper elementary kids), and lined it up exactly with the state math standards our co-op uses. I hit play, leaned back, and waited for their reaction.
Leo, my 10-year-old, paused it 1 minute 45 seconds in, right when I’d finished defining numerators and denominators. “You talk way too slow at the start,” he said. “I already knew this part. I was scrolling on my iPad under the table by the time you got to adding fractions.” Mia, 8, chimed in, twisting her half-dried slime around her finger. “Yeah, and all your cereal is Cheerios. They look the same. I couldn’t tell which pieces were for the top of the fraction and which were for the bottom. Why didn’t you use blueberries too?”
I felt that little twinge of defensiveness, the one you get when you spend hours on something and the first reaction is criticism. “I started slow for kids who’ve never seen fractions before,” I said. Leo rolled his eyes. “Then just put a time stamp in the description that says skip to 2:00 if you already know the basics. Duh.” Then they both took off out the back door to chase our dog, leaving me sitting there with my laptop and a plate of crumbs.
That’s when I realized I’d been making educational videos for a full year, and I’d never once asked a kid for feedback before sharing them. I’d sent drafts to my teacher friends, asked other co-op parents what they needed, adjusted content based on quiz scores after kids watched, but I’d never checked in with the people actually sitting and watching the videos. It sounds obvious now, but it never occurred to me before.
I’ve always thought of feedback as something adults give each other about educational content. We talk about alignment, clarity, pacing, all from our grown-up perspective. But what I’ve learned over these past few months is that the feedback kids give is almost always small, actionable, and way more useful than anything an adult can tell you. After Leo and Mia left, I went back and rewatched the video. They were right: the first two minutes were slow enough that I’d zone out too, if I was 10. Adding time stamps took me two minutes. Switching my demo from all Cheerios to half Cheerios half blueberries took another five minutes of re-filming the opening segment. That was it. The whole video was way better for a 10 minute tweak.
Now, I make it a habit to run every draft video by at least two kids who are in the target age group before I post it. I don’t ask “what did you think?” because that almost always gets you “it was good” or “it was fine” that doesn’t help. I ask two specific questions, every time: What part made you bored or want to stop watching? What part was confusing even after the explanation? That’s it, it takes them two minutes to answer, and I get specific feedback every time.
A few weeks ago, I did this with a pre-algebra video for 7th graders in our co-op. One 12-year-old told me, “You kept saying ‘this is super easy’ and when I didn’t get it right away, I felt stupid.” I’d had no idea I was even saying that. It sounded like a reassuring line to me, meant to take pressure off, but it landed completely different for a kid who was already nervous about math. I edited those phrases out in 10 minutes, and that was that.
There are still things I mess up, of course. Sometimes I get conflicting feedback: one kid says I talk too fast, another says I talk too slow. But that’s what time stamps and slightly longer pauses are for, and that’s an easy fix. I don’t have to remake the whole video to accommodate different skill levels. I still sometimes forget to ask for feedback when I’m cramming to get a video posted before the start of the semester, and I always regret it. Last month I posted a video on area of triangles without asking, and Leo texted me halfway through the first day that I’d held the ruler wrong the entire time so all my example measurements were off. I had to go back and fix it that night.
What surprises me most is how low-effort most of these changes are. I went into this thinking feedback would mean hours of reworking everything I’d done, but 90% of the changes kids suggest take less than 15 minutes to implement. They notice things that adults don’t: boring openings, same-colored manipulatives, offhand phrases that hurt feelings, missing labels that make it hard to skip ahead.
If you’re a teacher making videos for your class, or a parent putting together a study guide for your kid’s big test, or even a caregiver making a video to walk a kid through a recipe they love, this works for you too. You don’t need a group of kids to test it, just one kid close to the target age, and those two questions. It doesn’t require any extra training or fancy tools, just two minutes of their time.
Last week I got an email from a parent in Oregon who uses my videos with her 9-year-old. She said he’d been struggling with fractions for months, and after watching my updated video, he got it in one sitting. She specifically mentioned that he loved being able to skip the parts he already knew, which cut his study time in half. That didn’t happen because I’m a great teacher or I made some perfect video. It happened because two kids told me what was wrong with the first one, and I made two tiny changes.
I’m still getting used to asking for kid feedback every time. It doesn’t come naturally, when I’ve spent years planning lessons around what adults say kids need. But more often than not, the best improvements are the ones the kids point out themselves.
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