Friday 30 September 2011

Power of Video

Had two "learning" tasks yesterday and it was interesting to compare them.
Firstly, I had registered on the webinar "Delivering Your Message Online with the Power of Video and the Ease of EduVision", which was due live at mid-day Central American time. I waited and waited, with the window for GoToMeeting stating "waiting for organizer". I Skyped the telephone number directly in case there were internet problems but got the recorded voice telling me that the webinar will start shortly. Eventually, half an hour later, its started.
It seemed a little disorganised and clearly they had had some "technical difficulties". It continued, with the presenters not being able to move on their slides.
Chris Bartch did a competent job on how to upload a video to EduVision and how to use its features, and Aric Harrier, a teacher showed how he uses video. I saw impressive use of student videos here. And finally, Alan November gave a good account of the power of video.
Secondly, I looked at the VIDEO of the presentation of the week for Change11 MOOC I am participating in. Martin Weller gave a very competent and understandable presentation on Digital Scholarship. This was a video of the webinar. The "Power of Video" was evident since I was able to stop, take notes, go back, etc, very easily using YouTube controls. I felt in control of my learning.
Using the webinar was slow, I did not concentrate, there were too many technical hitches to make it worthwhile. Ironically, if they had made three video presentations instead of the live webinar (bearing in mind the title of the webinar!), it would have been a much better experience. Discussions? There was nothing worthwhile on the webinar because it over-ran. But the three videos could have been on a blog and comments used to carry out the discussion.
It showed me the Power of Video as visual and audio media under your control.
Later note: have a look at a video produced involving 1st grade students on how to achieve peace (Peace One Day assembly). A good example of a teaching video.

4 comments:

Jarrad said...

I agree that video in education is potentially powerful. My research involves having students submitting videos of themselves working problems on the board and explaining the concepts, instead of simply turning in paper. I wonder if you think this would be "powerful" in the same sense, and if you know if this has been done anywhere else.
#change11
jreddick@gatech.edu

Unknown said...

Jarrad - this is extremely powerful, both from the point of view of an explanation for their peers but more importantly, having to explain it to others makes sure that they have knowledge, skills and understanding themselves.
Have seen this being done with excellent results (in mathematics particularly, showing how factorization works, for example). The ones that I have seen shows an overhead view of the student as they work on large pieces of paper in front of them - you can't see the student but you see what they do on paper (thickish felt tip pen) and you can hear their explanation.

Jarrad said...

George
I'm putting together a website that will show some example videos from 3 different perspectives:
1. student-developed, as assigned by an instructor for homework
2. instructor-developed, as in the "flipped classroom" model
3. peer-developed, as a tutorial video would allow one student to help another (or a group) or their peers to understand a particular concept. This would be different from the standard Youtube topic-based videos in that they would be "on-demand" (in a sense).

Please let me know where you've seen these examples you mention.

Unknown said...

Jarrad - cannot find the original example but Teacher Tube has some - here is one:
http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=7910