‘Press Play’ Isn’t a Teaching Strategy: Why Educators Need New Methods for Video
5 min readMy initial foray into working with online video in my educating involved a Television cart wheeled into my classroom, replete with a connected VHS player—and no distant.
As a teacher or a scholar, you may perhaps remember a holiday-7 days screening of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or a college-large exhibiting of a “Stranger Risk” PSA? No matter if a characteristic film or an tutorial video, the ‘80s and ‘90s had been a ‘press-play’ society that envisioned college students to sit continue to, absorb and retain, although the educator sat in the back grading. I however recall a single instructor I experienced pointing to his Television cart and saying, “that’s the hectic teacher’s ideal close friend.”
Quick-forward to 2022, and it’s significant to check with: Are teachers however pushing today’s version of that Television set cart into our on the net and bodily lecture rooms?
While 97 % of education and learning gurus in Kaltura’s State of Video in Training annual report say that video is “important to students’ tutorial activities,” when it arrives to educational online video tactics, several instructors are nonetheless urgent participate in. Maybe this is basically mainly because we have not knowledgeable techniques that move further than the passive online video practical experience.
As I organized to educate my 1st academic videography course earlier this year, I located that we lacked a common vocabulary for speaking about how we style discovering with video in intellect. Considering that then, I have been advancing the term “video paratext” to replicate the myriad approaches that we style academic steering, prompts, things to do or interactive components to surround or be incorporated in just a video clip.
I pulled the phrase “paratext” from the area of poetry translation because, individually, I appreciate the “paratext” that precedes or follows a poem—or even interrupts it. At poetry readings in individual, I lean into the terms that a poet shares in advance of or after reading through each individual poem. Paratext will help me connect with and make feeling of the poem.
Furthermore, I question educators to take into account how to aid college students connect with video clips by means of numerous prompts and things to do that surround, or are involved within just, the video.” May possibly these “paratext” inspire pupils to get a closer glimpse at a video they’ve viewed, the way I may well want to reread a poem to see how it operates or what it signifies?
With that in mind, I inquire educators this dilemma: How can we use video clip paratext to advance inquiry and engagement? Offered that YouTube continues to be chocked full of academic video clips that are usually available and tailor made-captioned, potentially we really do not have to reinvent the wheel or develop into Diy videographers to discover an technique to video-based mostly mastering that matches our teaching philosophy?
Introductory Paratext
Let us think about what may well simplicity students into video clip-primarily based studying. Consider the pupils with the least and the most working experience applying academic films. Maintain in thoughts that college students never have widespread expectations around how to use individuals videos. What form of introductory textual content, movie or activity may guide everyone into the assigned video without having mind-boggling them?
In this article are some ways an teacher could tee up a clip:
- Technological Paratext: These times pupils have a good deal of specialized instruments to condition their viewing experience, which includes working a video at double-pace (or greater). So it can be useful for academics to discuss about what type of viewing they count on for a provided assignment—and regardless of whether it’s ok to skim, or even skip, parts of a online video. I inspire educators to incorporate the video’s title, duration, joined supply and a summary of any linked actions we assume learners to comprehensive.
- Online video Hooks: As college students cross into video-land, the check out can be disorienting. An assigned video clip may well be a individual most loved of the teacher, but to learners, it is new, and not automatically of fascination. Teachers can start by supporting college students draw private connections with that online video. Creating on what Madeline Hunter phone calls an “anticipatory established,” instructors can consider to spark curiosity, activate prior understanding or support students lean into learning with a perception of expectation?
- Video Framing: Even though an instructor cannot continually prevent the movie to note what to look at for, it is attainable to plant a key concern or two at the outset and motivate pupils to preserve that in brain. I usually check with students to check out with an eye for recurring themes, a precise design strategy or analytical lens. It can also enable to really encourage college students to appear for problematic aspects such as glitches in issue solving, bias, or the absence of sure views (i.e. viewing “against the grain”).
- Be Student-Centered: While the educator might nonetheless stop up in the “back of the room” in the course of a video-based exercise, students don’t have to keep on being passive. Prompt college students to jot concerns in advance of they look at and through their viewing. Ask students to produce new strategies and theories that they can share.
- Established Clear Expectations. Irrespective of the solution, make confident to explain what is predicted of learners in this video clip-based understanding experience—especially if there is a connected quiz or abide by-up activity.
Closing Paratext
Way too usually, the steerage lecturers give about films inadvertently relegates our function as educators to what we may phone, “learning compliance screens.” In other phrases, too generally we just administer a substantial stakes examination or a pop quiz to check regardless of whether they viewed a video. What closing actions may possibly support learners reflect or implement their awareness to an authentic job or practice?
In my activities as a K-12 teacher and now in the college or university placing, I have asked students to offer a “micro-reflection” of a movie, producing 3 sentences or building a 1-moment movie explaining what they figured out and what they want to dig further on. I have also questioned learners to clarify how a video they viewed is suitable to their possess lifetime or neighborhood. I’ve even requested pupils to visualize on their own in the director’s chair, explaining an alternate ending they’d fairly see, or fleshing out the storyline of a minimal character.
System Paratext
There are edtech instruments that can support integrate these approaches even as a video clip progresses. For case in point, you can embed prompts, quizzes, asynchronous conversations and range of other dynamic functions ideal in the center of videos employing equipment like PlayPosit, Edpuzzle and Nearpod. That suggests the teacher can also slice in with a note to pay back exclusive interest to some depth or theme in the up coming section.
These days there’s discuss of even far more immersive video expertise on the horizon—in a proposed metaverse staying pushed by key tech organizations. My hope is that lecturers remember to allow pedagogy travel our use of the newest tech—and that our emphasis on sharing new types of “video paratext” may support guarantee that revolutionary strategies align with our main beliefs about training and studying.
