I had seen a couple of the "In Plain English" videos prior to this week, and I love them! They are so creative, short but informative, and understandable. What a great idea to use this style as a project for students. The science videos were really great, and I'm sure that it helped the student's comprehension to be asked to create pictures and then audio for an explanation. Kudos to the teacher and the students! Again, time is my nemesis when working with any tool like this. If the students spend a lot of time on their art and less time on the audio content, then I'm not sure it would be worth it. However, I do think it would be worth a shot, especially for concepts like protein synthesis or photosynthesis that, for me, must be taught with many visuals.
Creative Commons is a neat site. There have been several comments about how it is not always convenient to ask for permission to use certain media, so Creative Commons gives an alternative to that. As teachers, we must make our best effort to be legal and to teach our students the citation processes that are required. It only makes sense that when someone gives time, energy, and ideas to create media that they have ownership of it.
I really enjoyed reading about the research done in 1951 concerning films and learning. I began showing a series of videos this year in my lower level environmental science class. I also found a great video on garbage collection and I used it also. I previewed each video, took notes, developed some questions, and then showed them in sections. After each section of the video we would have a class discussion, write down important points, then go on to the next section. The interest level in this group of students improved dramatically when we were watching video clips about different topics. In interviews these students shared that they felt that they learned better when we watched the videos. I felt kind of guilty, but then again, no one would see trash the same way after watching that video - it was awesome! Reading this chapter also made me feel a lot better about using video for instructional purposes. The guidelines for best practice were very helpful.
I am right there with you on the time issue... time is always a problem isn't it?? I was thinking about digital storytelling, and maybe instead of the kids drawing their own pictures, which could take them a lot of time, have them find clip art images to use instead. To avoid copy write problems they could use creative commons, and even Microsoft word clip art ( I am assuming that is okay to use?). Now they could take time looking for good photos, but maybe this would cut it down a little bit.
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