Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Innovative ways to find and use video for instructional purposes

This past year I worked on study of teachers' use of video for instructional purposes and we found many teachers in the study using video in very conventional ways - teachers were still inclined to show entire programs (sometimes up to two hour feature-length movies) even when a short clip would suffice to address the intended learning objectives. As part of our study we provided a DVD set for the program we were studying along with a complete index that provided descriptions of each program segment and how to jump right to those segments. There were also several teachers in the study who had access to streaming video services that offered shorter clips as well as full length programs. Access to, and use of these digital resources seemed to support teachers using video in new ways (e.g. a short clip-based approach rather than screening an entire program). It therefore stands to reason that teachers could capitalize on a site like YouTube that offers a wide variety of video programming.

The following article comes to many of the same conclusions about good and poor uses of video for instructional purposes - and specifically talks about using YouTube to provide unique and quality learning experiences.

From Education World/Brenda's Blog: Using YouTube in the Classroom

"Herding a class of students down to the computer lab to watch a few catchy videos has no more learning benefit than turning a class of students onto the Internet for a half hour of random surfing. The power of YouTube only is activated when the teacher has a clear idea of how a specific video clip can be used to introduce a concept or theme, instigate a discussion, or serve as a writing prompt."

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