Video Engagement

Music: flight of the bumble bee: Freeplay Music.

Video In Education.

This is a relatively easy form of processing once you get the hang of it and I believe it will become addictive!  Most senior primary school children would be able to manipulate this platform individually. Again the differences between computer types, mac or window and software types are to be considered.

For the making of this movie I used an apple Macbook and iMovie. It was a little challenging to begin with but with some help from my wife we worked through tutorials to include some basic features. I have learnt that often it is important to have some one capable helping those less able. I will definitely remember this in class. I am very pleased with this very simple offering considering where I started from. Ground zero. Time, as in all these assignments, was a huge factor, there is so much more I want to learn to do but will need to wait.
There are endless possibilities for this medium, both for teacher focus and student focus. It is interesting because the use of video needs to be differentiated into the creation of video and the software available to do this and the use and consumption of video as a teaching medium.

I will use a PMI chart to look further into the use of video in the classroom.

Positives:

• Readily available technology.
• Almost all mobile technology platforms have video options now.
• Low cost.
• High likely-hood of previous student use and familiarity.
• Portable. 
• Deep resource of prepared teaching videos available. e.g. Teacher tube, 100 best sites for video education, ICT how to videos TTV.
• Brilliant way to explore and establish prior knowledge in a subject.
• Teacher can tape own classes and assess pedagogy and behaviours.(Schwartz,D.L.course notes)
• Can be used to assess reading and literacy, a permanent record.
• Assess student class presentations.
• Project work / collaborative learning friendly.
• Field trip recording and documenting.
• Music class analysis and teaching aide.
• Brilliant from the visual learners point of view.
• Video manipulation software readily available.
• Most software relatively easy to navigate.
• Not language / culture specific, can often find relevant material in various languages / styles.

Minuses:

• Students can be passive in watching video in class and disengage.
• during running of video difficult for students to ask questions without disturbing flow of information.
• possibility of equipment malfunction.
• Legal and safety issues of student images and exposure to community.
• Can be time consuming especially for inexperienced.
• Can be individualistic.
• Not so great for a verbal learner.

Interesting:

I feel that the creation of video is the underpinning of the web. Yes, yes, we can argue that all day but it is vision that powers what we enjoy on the web. Video on the web to me is a focused, personal television, we search it out. Its power to communicate, create emotion and develop points of view, to sway our thinking are almost limitless. However we must analyse what we watch, why we watch and be metacognitive of the video process and analyse what the developer gets out of us watching.

Part of the Australian curriculum (ACARAv4.2) investigates the uses of video imagery and how it is used in society. In this very visual world, all aspects of video literacy are essential.
With creative thought video may be useful in almost all KLA's and are a magnificent tool to help younger students develop those ICT and metacognitive literacies.

Here is a video produced by Cybersmart on bullying, brings it home.

Teaching:

I feel a wonderful class objective would be to create videos about a single subject, perhaps climate change, and then suggest differing or possibly many points of view. Examples of differing styles could be shown. The exercise could be scaffolded in a way that asked small groups to act on a given bias / point of view towards the topic. Researching the web for ideas and examples and insights and then to bring it together and create a video using all the tools available. We could choose to be scientific, emotive, reflective, for, against, balanced etc. Higher order thinking could then be used as the groups analyse what they felt during each creation and debate the effectiveness of each of their tasks and how they may improve their efforts. 

This exercise could be a wonderful TPACK experience involving technology use embedded within curricular content and with good pedagogy may activate many levels of bloom's taxonomy. I can see how students with very differing intelligences (Gardener) could all bring their gifts to bear. The model provided by Daniel L. Schwartz & Kevin Hartman in course notes would be invaluable in this process.

Here is a LINK to a Teacher Channel video. I am a visual kinesthetic learner, and to see and learn and then role play is invaluable. I could read how to do it all day but not truly understand. For my students I know that I must bring diversity into my class for all learning types. Video will be an excellent tool for some of my students.

References: 

Australian Government (ACARAv4.2)English:Expressing and developing ideas, Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/English/Rationale