Krista McCormick

Journal Article Review

6/06/05

Video Goes to School, Part 1 is the first installment of a three part series on the use of video as a teaching tool. The author points out the advantages of showing video clips to enhance a lesson, as well as, teaching students how to produce videos to learn skills or demonstrate mastery of an objective. Teachers who are using video to enhance lessons feel that students become more engaged in the activity. This, they claim, improves the students’ performance. Teachers are using streaming video in all areas of the curriculum to enhance lessons. Video clips can be used to get the attention of the audience, or they can help students understand concepts better by taking them from the abstract to the concrete. Teachers find that video clips on the Internet are easier to access and easier to tailor to the objective being taught. Some teachers use clips from shows such as The History Channel and The Discovery Channel.

This article inspires me to look into using streaming video in my class and to introduce it to the staff at my school. It completely makes sense to integrate video into lessons. I think that the only reason more teachers aren’t doing it is because they don’t know the option exists. Video, or anything media related, is highly motivational to students in Elementary school. In our school, however, it is frowned upon to show a video. We almost feel that we have to hide the fact that we are showing one. This may be because they are lengthy and administrator feel that time could be more wisely spend trying to teach the curriculum in a traditional manner. Being able to pick 2-5 minute portions of a video would probably sound reasonable to administration, and it would help reinforce a concept or skill, as well as motivate the students. One way that I could use streaming video in my 1st grade classroom would be to show the life cycle of a frog. They have taken the lab aspect out of our curriculum, so the students don’t actually get to see the tadpole turn into a frog first hand. By using streaming video, I could show the students a short clip of a frog’s life cycle. It isn’t a good as witnessing it first hand, but it is the next best thing. I’m looking forward to reading the second part of this series, as it will explain how to use streaming video in more detail.

Branigan, Cara (2005, April 1). Video Goes to School, Part I: Whether watching or recording, students find video engaging. ESchool News online. Retrieved June 5, 2005, from http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/PFshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=5597.