The Use of Educational Videos in a Classroom

Students live in a world where they are immersed and engaged with media all of the time. Our students today are multiprocessors, they can watch a video, type a paper, and talk on the phone all at once. If we approach them without this understanding we may miss communicating wit them on the same level of personal motivation that they receive from other areas in their life. It is key to look at the idea of motivation as compared to engagement. You can play a video that engages students, however if you motivate them, it creates a call to action that requires a response from the engagement. That active role of the learner is very crucial.

I teach high school multimedia classes every day. I am able to witness the positive and negative aspects of using video resources in the classroom. The key to this is that the material must be engaging, relevant to what the student is learning, and have a practical aspect for the reason of why you are watching the video. I would like to share one video that I use with my own students and take a minute to comment on why I believe that this type of video is effective and well suited for my students' needs. 


As you can see the video above is a Vimeo Video School video that covers 3 tricks for a small film crew. I use this video as part of my introduction to a swipe cut video. This is the first effect covered in their movie. As the video starts of it explains what the concept is and how it is used in real movies. From there they show how to create this effect with only 2 people. Tip second covers split screen editing and the third tip covers mobile phone audio recording.

This is a perfect example of how I want videos to function in my classroom environment. From a content point of view it covers the concept of a swipe cut. They show what it is and how to create it. Then they go on to cover two other tips tat my students can use in their video projects as they are almost always shooting in in small groups in my class.

From a technical side this video has a high production value. It starts with a 5 second bumper for their branded content and then it has a flashy opener for the title of this film. One of the most important aspects of every video is the audio and this video does that well. Along with their audio that narrates the film they use text as animated graphics to emphasize what or who are doing things. The video has quick and smooth transitions which conveys the content very quickly. Along with the standard content they have a little humour built in. Humour always helps. As they describe their technique they show both behind the scenes footage as well as what the actual footage really looks like. In their video they use several locations and different costumes to create more visual appeal as well as helping to create more ways in which students can relate their own ideas to that topic.

All this content is crammed into two minutes and thirty seconds. This leaves time to discuss the content and concepts to clarify any issues that students may have. From there they can continue to work on creating their video. If they need to go back and have another look at the video they can since it is available online and it is short enough to quickly find the spot that they want to understand better.

This is an example of how I use video in my classroom on a daily basis. More content for a wide variety of subjects should be created to function in this way. If you want to see an augmented reality app that can change the way that you integrate media into an existing non technological environment, have a look at http://www.aurasma.com/.

Thanks and please feel free to leave me any comments or thoughts on this topic.