Abstract
The tools available for
teachers to integrate technology into the curriculum can be overwhelming.
Revisit a tried and true technology, video, which has been upgraded
for the digital age. Video is a highly motivating medium for middle
school students, especially when they are allowed to film their own
movies. A discussion of research based methods for effectively using
video in the classroom is followed by ideas and resources for creating
movies to use with students.
Introduction
With the pervasiveness of the Internet both in the classroom and in student's personal lives, along with calls to integrate technology from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and the National Education Technology Standards (NETS), teachers are pressured to find effective and efficient strategies for integrating technology and online resources into the curriculum. However, without the time and money for training, many schools find it difficult to support teachers in incorporating these resources successfully. One solution is a return to a technology that many teachers are already comfortable with - video. Access to a variety of video resources via the Internet and DVDs makes it easier than ever for bringing video back into the classroom.
Video in the Classroom
Reasons for using video in
the classroom vary from the practical to the pedagogical. Time and money
limit the number of field trips schools can offer and time travel is
impossible, however video can help to take students anywhere and anytime.
Video can also present material with which the teacher may not be completely
comfortable. On the other hand, the true value of video is in its potential
to increase learning. Lankford (1992) claims, "Tying emotions to
the learning experience increases retention of the learning,” and he
adds, “The teacher's real challenge in using film or video is to ensure
that the students experience the emotional impact" (p. 1).
Growing up in the digital age, today's students are much more comfortable than their parents or teachers with gathering information from a variety of mediums. Valmont (1995) proposes that students' "cognitive learning styles and information processing abilities might be heavily influenced by exposure to the massive visual information offered by television and video" (p. 12). Why not harness this visual information for use in the classroom? After all, twenty years ago we could not imagine the influence the Internet would have on our daily lives. We have only to look at the pervasiveness of the Internet and cell phones to realize how our students will be communicating differently in the future. The question for teachers is how to prepare students for this visual future. Students will need to be visually as well as verbally literate.
Visual literacy is the ability to appreciate, interpret, evaluate, and analyze visual communications of all kinds (Lankford, 1992). However, visual and verbal literacy work together. In Collins' (1997) discussion of visual literacy, she points out that we are not moving away from verbal literacy towards visual literacy, but towards a "world of multimodality" where pictures and words work together. We use both words and pictures in all content areas: graphs in math, diagrams in science, and photographs of far away cultures in social studies. It is only a matter of time before video becomes a common tool for describing and analyzing a variety of concepts. It is important to prepare our students to be critical viewers as well as critical readers.
This idea that pictures and particularly video or film has its own language or ways of communicating is inherent to the study of symbol systems. Gavriel Salomon (1979) laid the groundwork for the study of media in terms of symbols. He claimed that all media is made of symbols inherent to that media. For example, print media uses paragraphs, sentences, and punctuation to convey content to the reader. Film or video has its own symbology such as the framing and order of shots, zoom and pan, and other devices to convey content to the viewer. Salomon admits that different subject matter, contexts, and learners can benefit differently from the use of these symbols, and his research probes the ways in which students and other viewers learn from the symbology of video media. What is most important, however, is that the unique symbology of video has the potential to increase learning if used correctly.
Another factor in the effectiveness of video is how it grabs the attention of the student and promotes comprehension. Observations of students watching television indicate that attention is intermittent although students continuously monitor programs on some auditory or visual level. Initially, watching a video was seen as a passive activity. The object was to capture the viewer's attention and then it was thought that the viewer would simply comprehend and retain all information presented. In effect the television controlled the viewer. Newer, active theories assume the viewer plays an active role by examining, filtering, and processing what is presented. This idea of intense visual attention depends on the meaningfulness of the content (Anderson & Lorch, 1983).
If teachers can aid students in the monitoring, filtering, and processing of visual information, comprehension and retention of information presented through video will increase. Salomon (1981) created a term for this, AIME, or Amount of Invested Mental Effort, in which learning does not occur unless viewers are actively thinking as they watch a video or television program. For example, studies from the 1950s have shown that activities as simple as having students recite phrases along with a narrator or respond to questions embedded in a video can dramatically increase retention (May et al., 1958).
Specific properties of video, particularly on DVD, CD, or the Internet, can be exploited to enable active viewing by students. Video may be stopped and started to enable discussion and speculation. It can also be easily replayed, slowed down, or sped up to reinforce concepts that may be difficult to understand. Most importantly, because video consists of auditory and visual information that is usually conveyed concurrently, students have multiple opportunities to process information. Studies show that optimal learning occurs when verbal and visual information is presented simultaneously (Wetzel, 1994).
So how does all of this translate to the classroom? Video is only as effective as the manner in which it is used to teach. In fact, "differences between media may be less important than the teaching methods used within a medium" (Wetzel, 1994, p. 10). This paper offers specific, concrete strategies for improving the value of video as an instructional tool particularly for students with lower abilities or limited prior knowledge.
As early as the 1940s when film was first being used as an educational tool, the ability to pause a film to ask questions and spur discussion was seen as a means to increase motivation and participation. A Yale study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America to evaluate teaching films found that splicing questions into a film to focus student attention produced an average increase in post-test performance of over 10% (May, 1958). A similar study conducted in 1994 looked at high school chemistry students viewing a set of 30-minute videos over the course of the school year. In the group in which the video was stopped every 5-7 minutes for questions and class discussion, performance on the end of year achievement test was 20% higher than for the control group in which the video was shown without interruption (Harwood, 1997). One participant's reaction to the study was quite compelling:
When I know she [the teacher] is going to stop the tape, then I know I am supposed to be listening for stuff and that she will ask questions. It's not like I have to watch this tape for the whole period and then I find out that I didn't even get the point. When my teacher stops the video she asks questions, and if no one knows the answer, she rewinds the tape and we listen again. It takes some getting used to, but at least you learn that way (Harrwood, 1997, p. 628).
Using video purposefully not only draws student attention to important information and concepts, it also models visual literacy so that over time students become more critical and efficient consumers of visual material.
Student achievement through the use of video can also be improved by teacher introductions and class preparation. Teaching strategies include identifying portions of the video that may be difficult to understand, listing points to look for, and presenting a brief summary of the video before viewing. In fact, "teacher directed reviews and summaries following the film have also been found to be about as effective as introductions, and in some cases, were more effective than a second showing of the film" (Wetzel, 1994, p. 22). Even the placement of the video within a unit of study can affect how much students learn from the experience. May (1958) found that when a film is shown to introduce a topic, it is far less effective in increasing student understanding than when it is shown as a review at the end of a unit.
Lankford (1992) suggests using only specific elements of video such as viewing the video without audio and asking students to describe what they see or think is happening before viewing the video with sound or narration. It is effective to stop the video often to discuss and clarify points or to show only the portion of the video that is relevant to the lesson. It may also be useful to show more than one video on the same topic for comparison. Other important teaching considerations when using video include reducing visual or audio distractions and refraining from asking students to take notes as this can detract from their processing of the information and concepts presented (Wetzel, 1994; Valmont, 1995).
The strategies described above can be applied regardless of content area or age group. Other uses for video are more subject matter specific and samples are summarized in the table below (Herrell et al., 1998).
All of these methods for integrating video into the curriculum can be applied to commercially produced videos as well as videos you create yourself. In fact, in many situations it may be easier or more relevant for you and/or your students to create a video to use in class. The following section describes the equipment and steps necessary for creating quality classroom video.
Creating Your Own Video
In Shadow of the Vampire,
Cage (2000) talks about the value of video to memory:
Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture. Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede; our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal; our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize; and our music will linger and finally overwhelm, because it will have a context as certain as the grave. We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory... but our memory will neither blur nor fade.
Educational digital video memories may not blur or fade but they are certainly subject to compression artifacts and may take days to download. Below are guidelines for creating video that will perhaps reduce some issues with digital video.
Equipment
The most basic essentials for shooting video include a camera, tripod, microphone, and lights.
Camera
When considering the purchase of a new camera it is important to understand the different types that are available. The type of camera will depend on the subject as well as intended use of the film and how it will be edited.
Digital cameras encode the data they collect (audio and video) as a
discrete series of 0s and 1s on magnetic tape. This makes it easier
to capture the video to a computer without loss of quality. Digital
cameras are generally more expensive than analog cameras but produce
a higher image quality. The four main types of digital camera available
today, in decreasing order of quality and cost include MiniDV, Digital8,
MicroMV, and web cameras (or webcams). Although webcams are not often
considered because of low image quality, they are affordable and can
record directly to a computer via a USB serial port (Click and Go
Video, 2002).
Analog cameras record video and audio data as a continuously varying waveform which makes for a smoother picture. However, loss of quality occurs during download to a computer for editing. Analog cameras in general are larger and cheaper than digital cameras. There are three main types of analog cameras: VHS with tapes that can be played in a video cassette recorder (VCR), Standard 8, and Hi8 which is just an enhanced version of Standard 8 and uses the same tapes as Digital8 cameras (Click and Go Video, 2002; Martindale, 2002).
Another consideration is the method for connecting a camera to computer. The most efficient means, particularly for digital cameras, is IEEE audio input and output. Common trade names for IEEE are FireWire (by Apple) and iLink (by Sony). The advantage of FireWire is that video can be captured to a computer in real time with perfect synchronization between video and audio. Most computers now feature a FireWire port although many cameras will also connect via USB serial port (Martindale, 2002).
Other features to look for in a video camera are the number of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and zoom. CCDs are computer chips that convert light coming into the camera into digital signals and are only found on digital cameras. The number of CCDs varies from one to three and will largely determine the quality and cost of a camera. The amount of zoom may also be important. Optical zoom is true zoom that uses the lenses on the camera to make the image appear larger while digital zoom merely enlarges the pixels and can make an image appear boxy (Martindale, 2002).
