Most of us probably have distinct memories of when we were students and the teacher would wheel out the television cart (or perhaps thread the projector depending on how long it’s been since your school days) to watch a show, film, educational video, or movie. Depending on the material, the learning experience could have been effective or ineffective, entertaining or dreadfully boring. Sometimes perceived as the hallmark of a teacher who is looking to give themselves a break, or just “phoning it in”, there are in fact several sound pedagogical reasons for using video, when applied properly.
Indoctrination!!!
Pedagogical Rationale for Videos
Videos can be used as a way to initiate a class. One of the challenges an instructor often faces is getting the class engaged when the class first begins, and a great way to grab their attention immediately is with a powerful video excerpt that sets the stage for that day’s lesson. If sufficiently thought provoking, the video can be used to precede a discussion related to the material that will be covered during the class. Depending on the subject, a well-selected video can also provide additional perspectives on a topic by illustrating abstract concepts and documenting processes that might elude students whose learning styles are more visual in nature, or demonstrating an idea or principle that is much more difficult to explain with words alone. Videos can also create more meaningful learning experiences by infusing the subject matter with an emotional potency that traditionally delivered lectures can sometimes fail to convey. By allowing the students to engage the material both intellectually and affectively, the teacher increases the likelihood of both retention and comprehension.
Videos in and out of the Classroom
With the ever evolving and improving technology that has been developed to deliver videos, teachers now find a wide array of tools and choices available to them, whether that video material will be viewed in the classroom or made available online. What has become increasingly easier for teachers to accomplish in the past few years has been making educational videos available through the Internet. One particularly attractive advantage to making use of online video content is that the teacher is no longer restricted to using valuable class time to share the video with their students, but instead can direct the students to where they can view the material as an assignment that will be carried out on the students’ own time. Whether the video already exists on a third party’s website, or if the video has been created by the instructor themselves, making these videos accessible to their students in an online environment is a simple process.
Sharing Videos: Links
The easiest method to share a video with others is to simply provide them with the link to the website where the video of interest appears. The link could be printed on paper, sent to them via email, made available to them through WorldClassRoom, or perhaps even through a website you have made on your own. An example this method would look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ
My fiancee and I actually received a Pollock-decorated cake from two of her students - minus the cigarette ash, thankfully.
In this example, the user would click the link (or manually enter the address if the link was provided as a handout) and would then be transported to the website (in this case YouTube), to watch the video featuring Jackson Pollock.
Note that in this instance, the student has to be visiting the YouTube website, and the video starts playing at the beginning of the clip. This can be problematic on two counts: First, the student is now on YouTube’s website, and there are numerous opportunities for distraction, and the commentary that frequently accompanies the videos from other visitors can often be characterized as inane at best (it is my belief that after reading too many YouTube comments that your IQ will actually drop about five points or so).
YouTube Power-User Tip!
The second potential problem is that the video might be extraordinarily long, or that the video’s starting point is not where you would like the video to begin. A not well-known yet effective remedy to this issue is to append a small bit of additional information to the end of the link we used a few moments earlier. You can specify the starting point of any YouTube video by adding a minute and second designation at the end of the link. Read on to see what I’m talking about.
Suppose in this instance you would like the previous video to start at one minute and four seconds into the clip itself. This can be accomplished by adding the following characters to the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ + #t=01m04s
The “#t=01m04s” is basically stating “I want the start time (#t) to be equal to one minute (01m) and four seconds (04s) into the clip.” So the link would look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ#t=01m04s
Go ahead and click the above link and note the time at which it starts. Depending on the duration of the clip, this could prove an invaluable trick to save some time whether you are showing the video in class or having the students visit YouTube from their computers at home.
While this helps provide some control as to when the video starts, we are still faced with the problem of how to make the clip available without including all of the extraneous links and distractions that are present on YouTube’s website. In order to isolate this video from its context entirely, we will need to embed the video.
Next time…
Come back next week when I will explain what embedding a video is, how to do it, and what the advantages are.
0 Response to “Video as a Tool for Teaching – Part II”