Content Delivery
Educators are discovering the power of video instruction as a delivery method for content delivery. Benefits include the ability to access anytime and anywhere being able to pause, re watch, and review videos; and even for quick learners to skip ahead, once they've absorbed the ideas. These aspects allow class time to shift into a more individual, differentiated experience for students.
Video instruction really becomes meaningful is when students begin creating their own course content!
For example when studying rocks, students find a particular type of rock outside of school and then make a short video explaining the characteristics of this rock and how those features are used to determine the type it is.
Here is an example created by a student studying rock abrasion:
During this process a student will become able to explain a topic in their own words which means they develop expertise which signals a deep amount of knowledge not normally found with more traditional passive methods of instruction.
Encouraging students to develop their content outside of class allows them to cultivate content connections within their world. Smart phone technology makes this very easy and effective. Often much of the video can be recorded and edited right on a students’ device. Allowing for this and reducing restrictions and parameters builds an environment where learning is not restricted to within the class room.
- Videos should be short, between one minute and three is a good guide.
- All visual content must be created by them. That means finding images online and copy/ pasting in strongly discouraged.
- Sound, voice overs and visual prompts should be clear and non distracting.
- Students may choose platform and save/ edit in popular file type for upload.
Click here to visit an archived playlist to see more examples
Worldwide Audience
Once students have researched their topics, had discussions and created their screencasts they need to put them online so that others beside just the teacher can view them. This is such an important part of this process because truly special work occurs when students know many others will see it and learn from it. Additionally teachers can promote student content to a much broader audience and help end the practice of being the only other person to see student work.
Ensemble Video Dropbox and Student Videos
The Ensemble Video Dropbox application truly shines for transcoding, managing, and publishing student videos. With this feature, I can easily configure an upload point, where students can add their videos to my Ensemble Video Media Library. Ensemble is able to ingest just about any file type, from just about any device they can throw at it. Once uploaded to my Media Library, I moderate the videos and publish them to an Ensemble Video Playlist.
Providing the Video Dropbox link on the same page as my student Playlist keeps everything centralized, and with minimal hassle each student can upload his or her unique content, easily and quickly.
From the teacher’s perspective, this removes many hours of uploading the videos themselves, which usually would need to be done on-site due to students saving the files on school servers. The Dropbox feature encourages anytime, anywhere, intrinsic learning because it is always available.
Here’s a video created and uploaded by a student studying the phases of the moon: