Use the Video

Digital video can be used in numerous ways to enhance the learning experience.

Digital video can:

  1. Illustrate step-by-step procedures for an experiment or activity
  2. Provide a tutorial or homework help that can extend the teacher’s "face time" with students.
  3. Immerse the students in a different environment, such as a different ecosystem. Digital video can create the illusion of an exotic environment with very little effort, such as a video of a terrarium or tropical fish interacting in an aquarium.
  4. Illuminate environments that cannot be viewed by the unaided eye, such as microscopic or telescopic environments

Added benefits of digital video for the instructor are to:

  1. View a scientific concept in a new light by incorporating visual elements into the classroom lecture
  2. Distill scientific concepts into a compelling video short
  3. Share innovative concepts and presentations with other instructors via the Web.

Digital video can be viewed in the classroom, provided on CD or DVD as a take home activity, or viewed on demand via a website. It is important to be sensitive to the home computing facilities available for students. In terms of equity, digital video should be readily available to all students. Be careful about relying on digital video, since students will not have equal access to digital videos for playback. Using short digital videos that can be easily viewed via the School Media Center or public library as an illustrative supplement is probably preferable to required viewing, which may be out of reach for some students.

It is also critical to be sensitive to the needs of current and future students with hearing or sight impairments, particularly for digital videos that you hope to reuse over time. Video editing software can be used to add captions from the script as an overlay, which can be used by hearing impaired students. Captions can also be added using freely available captioning software. The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) offers the captioning software MAGpie for free download via the NCAM website [6].

When creating the storyboard, be aware of the need to add audio descriptions for every shot, so that visually impaired students can also uccessfully use the video.

Involving Students

Involving students in the various tasks involved in creating the video—scripting, storyboarding, filming and acting—can teach students to distill and illustrate concepts, increase communication skills and technical proficiency and increase self esteem. Before using students as on-camera actors, or recognizable members of the audience, the policies of the school and school district should be identified. Written permission must also be obtained from the parents of each child appearing on camera.

Indexing and Access

As you create more digital videos, it may become difficult to select the most appropriate video for each use. Important information such as the concept illustrated, the experiment or activity documented, the duration of the video, the bandwidth requirements, and the date of the video may not be readily apparent from the file name. You can broaden access to your videos and insure that they can be readily discovered for reuse by yourself and others by creating catalog records that can be searched and that provide a hyperlink to the video file. Catalog records are included in a searchable, web-accessible database. Creating and maintaining this database requires technical skill and time. A good solution is to request that the school media center catalog the video for discovery through the media center online catalog, which is probably web-based. The local public library may also be willing to catalog the videos for access. There are many aggregators of educational resources available on the web that will index and provide access to your videos. The most comprehensive is the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM), which provides access to web-based educational resources for a range of ages and educational levels. [7] An innovative way to provide access to videos is to provide a storyboard of the key frames from each shot, which can be derived from the storyboard or presentation software used to create the initial storyboard. An index page of keyframe storyboards, in date or title order, can be an effective way to provide browsing access to what will hopefully be your growing collection of science digital videos.

Footnotes

[1] Futures Channel. Using Video to Enhance Instruction: a Special Report from E-School News.
New browser window will open for http://www.thefutureschannel.com/video_report.html. http://www.thefutureschannel.com/video_report.html

[2] Mallon, Adrian. Storyboarding Multimedia. 1995.
New browser window will open for http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/adrian_mallon_multimedia/story.htm. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/adrian_mallon_multimedia/story.htm

[3] Smith, Steve. "Video Lighting – Part I" in Digital Journalist. Issue 11.
New browser window will open for http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0011/videosmith.htm. http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0011/videosmith.htm

[4] Turner, Sherri, and Sedlak, Lisa. Creating Digital Video for Instruction. Faculty Development Institute, Virginia Tech. Fall 2002.
New browser window will open for https://www.fdi.vt.edu/fall/2002/s_content/digitalvideo/digitalvideo4.html. https://www.fdi.vt.edu/fall/2002/s_content/digitalvideo/digitalvideo4.html

[5] Gauch, Susan, et al., The Digital Video Library System: Vision and Design. College Station, TX: Center for the Study of Digital Libraries, Texas A&M University, [1994]
New browser window will open for http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/csdl/DL94/paper/gauch.html. http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/csdl/DL94/paper/gauch.html

[6] CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media. Media Access Generator (MAGpie)
New browser window will open for http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/. http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/

[7] The Gateway to Educational Materials.
New browser window will open for http://www.thegateway.org/. http://www.thegateway.org/

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Updated: March 10, 2005
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