‘Press Play’ Isn’t a Teaching Strategy: Why Educators Need New Methods for Video
My first foray into utilizing video in my educating concerned a TV cart wheeled into my classroom, replete with a linked VHS participant—and no distant.
As a instructor or a scholar, you might keep in mind a holiday-week screening of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or a school-wide exhibiting of a “Stranger Danger” PSA? Whether a function movie or an educational video, the ‘80s and ‘90s were a ‘press-play’ tradition that anticipated college students to take a seat nonetheless, soak up and retain, whereas the educator sat within the again grading. I nonetheless keep in mind one instructor I had pointing to his TV cart and saying, “that’s the busy teacher’s best friend.”
Fast-forward to 2022, and it’s vital to ask: Are academics nonetheless pushing at present’s model of that TV cart into our on-line and bodily school rooms?
Though 97 p.c of schooling professionals in Kaltura’s State of Video in Education annual report say that video is “essential to students’ academic experiences,” with regards to academic video practices, many instructors are nonetheless urgent play. Perhaps that is just because we haven’t skilled methods that transfer past the passive video expertise.
As I ready to show my first academic videography course earlier this yr, I discovered that we lacked a frequent vocabulary for speaking about how we design studying with video in thoughts. Since then, I’ve been advancing the time period “video paratext” to mirror the myriad ways in which we design academic steering, prompts, actions or interactive parts to encompass or be included inside a video.
I pulled the phrase “paratext” from the sector of poetry translation as a result of, personally, I like the “paratext” that precedes or follows a poem—and even interrupts it. At poetry readings specifically, I lean into the phrases that a poet shares earlier than or after studying every poem. Paratext helps me join with and make sense of the poem.
Likewise, I ask educators to think about the right way to assist college students join with movies by means of numerous prompts and actions that encompass, or are included inside, the video.” Might such “paratext” encourage college students to take a nearer take a look at a video they’ve watched, the way in which I would wish to reread a poem to see the way it works or what it means?
With that in thoughts, I ask educators this query: How can we use video paratext to advance inquiry and engagement? Given that YouTube continues to be chocked stuffed with academic movies which are typically accessible and custom-captioned, maybe we don’t should reinvent the wheel or grow to be DIY videographers to search out an method to video-based studying that matches our educating philosophy?
Introductory Paratext
Let’s contemplate what would possibly ease college students into video-based studying. Imagine the scholars with the least and essentially the most expertise utilizing academic movies. Keep in thoughts that college students don’t have frequent expectations round the right way to use these movies. What type of introductory textual content, video or exercise would possibly lead everybody into the assigned video with out overwhelming them?
Here are some methods an teacher would possibly tee up a clip:
- Technical Paratext: These days college students have loads of technical instruments to form their viewing expertise, together with working a video at double-speed (or better). So it may be useful for academics to speak about what sort of viewing they count on for a given task—and whether or not it’s okay to skim, and even skip, components of a video. I encourage educators to incorporate the video’s title, size, linked supply and a abstract of any linked actions we count on college students to finish.
- Video Hooks: As college students cross into video-land, the view might be disorienting. An assigned video could also be a private favourite of the trainer, however to college students, it’s new, and never essentially of curiosity. Teachers can start by serving to college students draw private connections with that video. Building upon what Madeline Hunter calls an “anticipatory set,” instructors can attempt to spark curiosity, activate prior information or assist college students lean into studying with a sense of expectation?
- Video Framing: While an teacher can’t continuously cease the video to notice what to look at for, it’s attainable to plant a key query or two on the outset and encourage college students to maintain that in thoughts. I typically ask college students to look at with an eye fixed for recurring themes, a particular design approach or analytical lens. It also can assist to encourage college students to look for problematic parts together with errors in drawback fixing, bias, or the absence of sure views (i.e. viewing “against the grain”).
- Be Student-Centered: While the educator should still find yourself within the “back of the room” throughout a video-based exercise, college students don’t have to stay passive. Prompt college students to jot questions earlier than they watch and through their viewing. Ask college students to generate new concepts and theories that they’ll share.
- Set Clear Expectations. Regardless of the method, be sure to make clear what is predicted of scholars on this video-based studying expertise—particularly if there’s a linked quiz or follow-up exercise.
Closing Paratext
Too typically, the steering academics give round movies inadvertently relegates our position as educators to what we’d name, “learning compliance monitors.” In different phrases, too typically we merely administer a excessive stakes examination or a pop quiz to verify whether or not they watched a video. What closing actions would possibly assist college students mirror or apply their information to an genuine challenge or apply?
In my experiences as a Ok-12 instructor and now within the school setting, I’ve requested college students to supply a “micro-reflection” of a video, writing three sentences or making a one-minute video explaining what they discovered and what they wish to dig deeper on. I’ve additionally requested college students to elucidate how a video they watched is related to their very own life or neighborhood. I’ve even requested college students to think about themselves within the director’s chair, explaining an alternate ending they’d moderately see, or fleshing out the storyline of a minor character.
Body Paratext
There are edtech instruments that may assist incorporate these methods at the same time as a video progresses. For instance, you possibly can embed prompts, quizzes, asynchronous discussions and vary of different dynamic actions proper in the midst of movies utilizing instruments like PlayPosit, Edpuzzle and Nearpod. That means the trainer also can lower in with a word to pay particular consideration to some element or theme within the subsequent part.
These days there’s discuss of much more immersive video expertise on the horizon—in a proposed metaverse being pushed by main tech firms. My hope is that academics keep in mind to let pedagogy drive our use of the most recent tech—and that our concentrate on sharing new sorts of “video paratext” would possibly assist make sure that modern approaches align with our core beliefs about educating and studying.
