Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Spicing Up Lessons with Video

My sophomores are finalizing presentations on the British Romantic poets today. After reviewing the standard grading rubric that I will use tomorrow, I reviewed tips for making a powerful and effective PPT presentation by showing this video:

Find more videos like this on TeacherLibrarianNetwork


We particularly noted the reactions of the audience members, and I reiterated that should any of their audience members behave as the first example then they would definitely lose points on the rubric. I thought this was a much more effective way for me to make my point to them.
  • How have you used video to enhance a traditional lesson?
  • When have you been in the audience when video enhanced your learning or understanding of the main point?

9 comments:

Rae said...

How have you used video to enhance a traditional lesson?
I have not used video this year except in english class. But in eighth grade we used video to make music lyrics for an educational song on weather patterns. The video taught and kept people entertained, if people are not entertained then they wont pay attention, and if they dont pay attention, they dont learn.

When have you been in the audience when video enhanced your learning or understanding of the main point?
I have seen teachers use videos within their powerpoints to enhance our learning of a certain point, or even to forgo the powerpoint and simply do a video. An example of this was in history class this year when jessicas group chose to do their presentation as a video using slips of paper as visual enhancers of what they were saying. If they had just read that information aloud, i doubt that i would be able to remember that they talked about the safavid empire.

Anonymous said...

Pictures can help the audience understand your topic and keep them more engaged.

The video that we watched was actually a presentation that helped me better understand how to make an interesting presentation. The comedic elements kept me entertained.

J. Clark Evans said...

Thanks Rae and Jess. I hope to remember to do more with video and (to see you do more with video) in our class this year and next.

Unknown said...

1. In 8th grade, Megan and I made a video of an interview for the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. It made people focus on the presentation because I feel that you can do more on film. Everyone's always up for a movie. We made it funny so that the audience could enjoy the movie and not fall asleep, as well as used celebrity characters to get them excited about what they would do in the interview.

2. Teachers are probably the best examples in this catagory. Teachers always have educational videos that thoroughly exaplain and use visuals to help us understand what the topic/lesson we are learning about.

Unknown said...

I would have to say that thanks to Brit Lit class, this is the first year that I have been presented videos as examples during or for lessons. Right off the bat, I immediately love the idea! Using videos are a great way to stress a certain topic, as well as to spice up a lesson. A great example of myself presenting a video would be the Beowulf project and on-going Macbeth project.

Now, a clear example of myself viewing a video presentation (besides English) can be seen in the earlier part of the year - when the different clubs such as SLC and Honor Council talked about their clubs through fun videos that they had recorded. By doing this, I discovered more of the club's important rules and motives, as well as view their silly side!

Anonymous said...

1. We have don a lot of video projects in high school and middle school. The first project we did this year was the Beowulf project which I think helped our understanding of the story.

2. We have also been shown video to enhance a point like this morning when we were shown the video from the global issues class.

Robin Howell said...

Wow, this is an awesome video! Thanks for posting it here, I can definietly see myself using this in my future classroom.
-Robin

Anonymous said...

1. I have used video to enhance my understanding when we created Beowulf videos. This is a great way to learn more about the story while being creative and fun. Not only did this video help us understand Beowulf better but it also enabled me to sit down and just work on editing videos. I love editing videos and when i get a chance to do it for a group or for school it is great. We are toward the end of our Macbeth Videos and it was a great experience because we have a scene where a mop misfires. Let me just say i had so much fun editing this scene; i cant say why because we haven't revealed our video yet.

2. During the election this year we watched a video at school how the voting works and what actually goes on. I thought that this was very helpful to get a visual idea of what goes on. I also watched other video about the government and i got a much better understanding.

Anonymous said...

1.How have you used video to enhance a traditional lesson?
I have really only used video for English class. While making the videos, I believe that we are able to get a better understanding of what is happening in the story. Also it makes it more fun for us with all of the costumes, characters and filming. With Macbeth this helped me to get a better understanding because we were able to modernize it, which helped a great deal in my understanding.

When have you been in the audience when video enhanced your learning or understanding of the main point?
Recently, the Contemporary Global Issues class have been giving presentations, I know that one group used a video presentation for theirs. It helped me to get a better understanding of what was going on because of the pictures, it wasn't just a perosn going on and on about their subject, there were pictures and things to help back up the speaker.