Videos as educational tools - analysis and reflection

A look at the third and final tool in the Group 2 Technologies - Multimedia: Images, Audio and Video.  The use of videos in education are endless.  They are the Twix of multimedia tools as they can incorporate both images and audio, as well as beating them both hands down!

According to Hoogeveen (1995), multimedia is supposed to lead to "a number of psychological responses:

• a high level of stimulation of the senses, at least with regard to the auditory and visual perception systems;

• a high level of involvement, attention, concentration;

• emotional arousal, e.g., fun; the word arousal is used in the psychophysiological sense of emotional, internal arousal, related to arousal of the nervous system;

• strong recognition effects, using mental reference models.

These psychological responses interact in a complex way so that they give people the feeling they experience information instead of acquiring it".  Hence multimedia is thought to improves not only "retention, understanding, knowledge acquisition, but also the entertainment value of systems (i.e., more fun)".  Kids are going to love it!

Brainstorm of some ideas for pupil-generated videos

Ctrl click here for specific examples of video-activities ascending Bloom's ladder:-

The Arts – record pupils’ musical, dance or dramatic performances; compare and contrast styles in art appreciation.  All of these uses cover media component of KLA!

English – presentation of written work practices oral literacy as well as written; add music and images to written work to emphasise mood and emotion.

Health & Physical Education – video diary of examples of a healthy lifestyle as part of health promotion “campaign”.

Language other than English (LOTE) – role play in various situations such as shopping, restaurants, hotels.

Mathematics – practical methods of illustrating understanding fractions:  cutting cakes, fruit, pies, etc.

Science – recording of results of experiment in rocket design.

Studies of Society & Environment (SOSE) – “tourist” promo vid, persuading visitors to come to pupils’ home town.

Technology – exposé of recycling process, from factory creating packaging, to home,  to Council’s Waste and Recycling Centre, back to factory using recycled material.

Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) – use of VoIP to connect with pupils in a school in another state.

Rather than spend time (that I don’t have!) surveying all the facets and applications of videos in education, I’m going to focus on the use of videos to deliver teaching (see PMI), with particular reference to The Khan Academy (see too my previous posting). 

PMI of using videos to deliver teaching

Plus

Available anywhere with internet

Lots of free examples

Any subject

Saves teacher prep time

Self-paced learning

Multi-sensory

Familiar, popular format

Minus

Potentially dehumanising

Not always interactive

No immediate feedback for pupil or teacher

Pupils can’t ask question if they don’t understand

No indication to the teacher of pupils’ understanding, without assessment

Pupils may skip essential parts

Need to ensure content specific enough and relevant

Terminology differs between countries

Large file size (email/download)

Buffering speeds may annoy

Risk of spending too long in front of screen

Can’t replace hands-on skills teaching of certain subjects

Interesting

Flipping the classroom on its head.  See discussion below on the Khan Academy. 

It’s all well and good doing an SWOT analysis or PMI, but do we throw away any tool that has weaknesses, threats or minuses? What we should be doing is seeing how to overcome or work around these limitations or barriers.I came across The Khan Academy (KA) when researching podcasts, which has no doubt flavoured my reflections in favour of vodcasts.  Why pod when you can vod?  Before going on to the “I” Interesting part of the PMI, let’s first look at an example.  On my first day of Prac, the Grade 7 teacher (Mr P) started with Order of Operations in mathematical (pre-algebra) equations.  He introduced the mnemonic BOMDAS.  It was clear that some of the pupils didn’t get it.

Adopting an approach like the Khan Academy does overcome many of the minuses, as will be illustrated after at the end of this introduction.

The KA has over two thousand educational videos available free of charge.  They are instructional videos, i.e. a video of a teaching session or lesson.  Here is their Introduction to Order of Operations video.  It is very similar in content to that delivered by Mr P on the white board, although the relevant mnemonic would be POMDAS (and the associated device “please excuse my dear Aunt Sally”) due to the difference in vocab/terminology of brackets vs parentheses.  Mr P could have saved himself time by showing this video in class on the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB), or he could have given the pupils the URL and told them to view the video at home if they hadn’t felt they had understood.  This ability for students to recap and learn at their own pace, stopping and starting and ‘rewinding’ the video is a huge advantage of video over live presentation, enabling the class to move on at a pace, rather than having to teach to the slowest learner’s speed.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

However, the video’s value as a standalone tool is limited (as per the PMI).  If Mr P had just told the class to watch the video at home and not done any teaching himself, the only way he would know if the class understood, skipped sections or even watched it at all, would be by way of assessment.  But the Khan Academy doesn’t stop at just producing videos.  They publish associated online, interactive exercises.  These are great.  There are thousands of them to practice on. 

The program saves the pupils results and they, they’re parents and Mr P can access those results.  The program shows the “winning streak” (the number of questions right in a ) row.  Once you’ve got 10 right in a row, you’re allowed/encouraged to go on to a different or more difficult exercise. 

Pupils score more points for speed, for winning streaks, etc, and the KA have employed gaming software engineers to enhance the feedback facilities of their site to be even more encouraging and engaging to children.  The dashboard of results is so comprehensive that entire schools in California have adopted the KA maths program in its entirety, enabling teachers to know which pupils are struggling or exceeding, how long they’re spending on exercises, which ones cause the most trouble to the most children to enable follow up on an individual or class-wide basis, etc. 

Rather than dehumanising the classroom, the KA considers it can do the opposite.  Imagine setting pupils the homework of watching the lectures themselves and doing some exercises.  When they come to class the teacher could set some more exercises (you can print out the exercises or put them up on the IWB, etc) and spend the entire less coaching; helping learners with specific problems they encountered at home, or going over a section that all pupils struggled with.  Better still, the more able pupils could peer-tutor those struggling pupils, thus improving everyone’s learning and freeing up even more teacher time to be applied one-on-one.

Speaking of those more able pupils, if there are any so gifted and talented in languages, what about setting them the challenge of translating one of the videos into a second language?  The KA mission is to

“provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.  With your help, we might be able to reach the 5.6 billion people who speak other languages. Let's translate the Khan Academy into all of the world's languages!

If you feel that you are capable of dubbing a video or even re-doing videos in a non-English language, here's a chance to become a hero and minor celebrity to your people. Millions of people could be learning from you across the globe. More importantly, it is a tangible opportunity to leverage your skills and talents to seriously change the world in a very good way. For all we know, students 25 years from now may be learning negative numbers from YOU! This might even be a way to preserve languages.”

Now that’s an engaging project to extend your brightest stars.

Minus Potentially dehumanising Not always interactive No immediate feedback for pupil or teacher Pupils can't ask question if they don't understand No indication to the teacher of pupils' understanding, without assessment Pupils may skip essential parts Need to ensure content specific enough and relevant Terminology differs between countries Large file size (email/download) and buffering speeds may annoy Risk of spending too long in front of screen Can't replace hands-on skills teaching of certain subjects

Minuses overcome by KA approach More one-to-one time in classrooms Exercises coupled with videos increase interaction Exercises provide feedback for both Hints or answers are provided by the exercises Dashboard results enable teacher to review pupils' results and focus further in-class coaching Dashboard results and teacher coaching avoids this KA videos have clearly-specified content. Teacher can add to content in class if insufficient Minor point and one teacher can address in class As with all ICTs, access to fast broadband speed is an issue, but could download to USB at school Dashboard illustrates how much time spent Not to be used alone, as panacea for all subjects.