Are You Making the Most of Each School Video?
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Media in the classroom gives us a world of experience that we can share with our students. We can show them the inauguration of a president or Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” We can see history, or we can see how letters fit together to make words, or how numbers can do whatever we want if we know some rules. With the right school video, we can show our students virtually anything.
But will they see what we need them to see? This is where the teacher comes in. Videos are wonderful tools, but like any tool, the outcome depends on the skill of whoever holds them. So to make sure your students are meeting your instructional goals, it is important to use videos correctly. Some people look at me like I’m crazy when I say this: how do you not use a video correctly? You just put it in the DVD player and there you go. No! If that’s all you’re doing, then chances are your objectives are not going to be met.
There are a few problems that can occur with videos – through no fault of the videos themselves! But whenever you turn off the lights, little people are likely to get sleepy. Students are going to start thinking about what they want to do at recess or who they will sit with at lunch or can I sneak and check my text messages. Teachers are distracted by their lesson plans for tomorrow or what they want to do at recess! It combines to create a colossal waste of time for everyone involved. Learning? Not so much.
This is why it is so important when you use a school video to use it well. The most important thing is to keep your instructional goals in mind and keep the students focused on those goals. How do you do this? Here are just a few good tips:
- Give your students pre-activities, discuss what will be on the video and what they should look and listen for.
- Provide viewing activities. These can be worksheets or any type of activity that keeps the focused and makes them accountable for the material.
- Break the video into segments. 50 minutes of video is often too much, but five or ten minutes can be remarkably effective. Use what you need to teach, not to fill time. The rule is the video clip should be no longer than twice the age of your class.
Are you using media to its best advantage? Are your goals being met? If not, don’t throw out the video. Just change your method of using it. For help in using videos more effectively, check out this link.
