I reckon I should start this post by stating that the essential ingredient you need so that video becomes an effective learning tool is preparation. Let me just suggest some simple tools and strategies for both language and content learning:
Before viewing:
- Choose carefully
Try to choose videos which contain relevant content for your subject and keep in mind it has to be engaging for your students. Needless to say you should look for high-quality stuff from a reliable source.
- Brevity is the soul of wit
How long should it last? The average attention span is really short in the case of teenagers so if you can find a suitable video which is longer than 15 minutes, consider cropping and editing it. Vibby allows you to edit your video and focus students' atention on the sections that matter.
- Set the proper scenario
This includes telling students what the video is about, the purpose of watching it and eliciting previous knowledge on the topic. Depending on the complexity of the video and the language level of your students, you will need to pre-teach the key words and expressions from the video.
While viewing:
- Avoid students' TV mode
Be sure you ask your students what you want them to do while they watch the video. In other words, do not let them think this is time for entertainment or daydreaming. This generic video note-taking worksheet can be hepful.
For CLIL teachers, the video response worksheets should be specific-content related. Let me show you an excellent example of a video lesson on cladograms by a teacher called Mariana Garcia:
As you can see, students were asked to use mind maps to show understanding of the concepts in the video. (The use of mind maps is a very effective strategy when checking students' understanding. You can use this strategy while watching or after watching the video).
- Pause often and use the watch-think-write strategy:
- Watch: students watch the section of the video you choose. Writing is forbidden at this stage.
- Think: students discuss the section in pairs or small groups. Still no writing allowed.
- Write: students now write the required information in their guided notes, and prepare new questions they still have on the topic.
If students are working at home and you want to monitor the learning process, use Edpuzzle . This is a great formative assessment tool for teachers who want to assign videos for homework, or want to encourage asynchronous communication, and unfortunately such is the case now. Edpuzzle will help teachers provide students with valuable information about the degree of achievement of specific learning outcomes that have been set beforehand.
After viewing:
- Do not be in a hurry. Take the necessary time to reflect on what they have learnt, make students retell the video or parts of it , prompt their critical skills by asking them to find videos on the same topic with a different viewpoint, have different groups create posters on it, etc.
- Allow students to spend some minutes on self-assessment of their work. We are fostering formative assessment and students' self reflection on their outcomes is an essential part of it. I hope this tool I have created will be useful for you.
Some free sources for educational videos:
Last but not least, from these lines, I would like to congratulate Mariana Garcia on her superb work for scaffolding students' learning process while viewing .
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