Embedded Task Two

Reflection – Video

I love the idea of enriching my future classroom with video.  Video has a familiarity factor that I believe is valuable for use in education.  Kids of today (based on my own children's experience) are used to learning from videos, being in videos and being a creator of videos. The image below identifies some of the qualities of Gen Z in terms of their ICT and video consumption.

Technical Aspects

There are so many ways to engage with video from a consumption point of view! Teachers have access to documentaries with online streaming services such as ABC iView and SBS on Demand. There are so many educational videos (over 700K) on YouTube that they created YouTubeEdu in 2009 as a place to put educational videos (Harven, 2015). You may still find some classes using DVDs. I imagine that most classrooms are streaming content directly to their smart whiteboard, smart TV or wireless projector via a laptop.

It becomes more technical when creating videos. There are many options available. What type of content is the video going to show? What competencies are to be displayed?  As seen in my post about videos, I have created two very different videos. The "Riding Story" was created to show my competency  in the skill of using dramatic speech.  I used Pow Toon to transform a video of me speaking, to a cartoon video delivering the key points in a visually stimulating way.

A consideration for creating videos is the file size and type.  Most video creators (I found this on both Movie Maker and Pow Toon) give many resolution options.  Even better, they frame these resolutions in terms of how and where you want to use (or upload) them. This helps those of us who are not all over the technical elements!  See below, a screenshot of this helpful feature.

Legal, Safety and Ethical Considerations

As I touched on in my reflection on blogs, copyright is a significant element to keep in mind when using digital media.  This certainly applies when creating videos.  The great thing about many video programs is you can utilise their music tracks without being concerned about breaching copyright (as I did with my Pow Toon).  The popular program Musical.ly , a video recording program, has an inbuilt feature to attribute content to the owner. For details on this app have a read of this article, it's interesting. Musical.ly (see picture below) is bringing awareness  to young people about attributing content when sharing their Musical.lys to Instagram, another social media platform.

Ethical and safety concerns are very real when it comes to video creation and sharing.  Students need to be made aware of the very serious consequences of filming people without their knowledge.  A recent news report outlines an incident of a student filming and sharing a video of a sexual assault.  The ramifications of this action affect many students and will continue to do so for some time yet.  It is a serious issue.

Classroom Context

I have discussed throughout this blog some of the aspects that make videos a useful tool for the classroom.  A detailed activity implementing the SAMR model utilising video is discussed in an earlier blog.  Another activity that could be modified is on my blog about podcasts.  This activity calls for an audio recording that could easily be changed to a video recording .

I plan to utilise video on my upcoming prac to get to know the students.  On my lead in days I aim to have one minute with each student and videoing them doing a 15-30 second introduction.  I will edit them all into a video to show them in my first lesson.  I plan to ask them to fill in the blanks of a script that has details about them (for example their name, favourite colour and favourite sport) as well as details about the class and world (for example, "the class clown is .......", "............. works the hardest", "I care most about     give them / three real world / issues to choose from", "the best online game is.........").  I will then be armed with knowledge about them before I take the reins. The point is to make it short and interesting with a little humour for good measure.  A secondary motivation is to build my knowledge of them for classroom management purposes.  Now to get that future mentor on board!

References

Cole, N. (2017) Video of Sydney teenager's alleged rape may 'still be circulating'. ABC News. Retrieved 30 March 2017, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-22/sydney-student-alleged-rape-video-may-be-circulating-school-says/8377138

Harven, M. (2015). What YouTube is Doing for Education |. EdTech Times. Retrieved 29 March 2017, from https://edtechtimes.com/2015/01/07/youtube-education/

Robinson, M. (2016) How to use Musical.ly, the app with 150 million users that teens are obsessed with. Business Insider. Retrieved 30 March 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-musically-app-2016-12//?r=AU&IR=T/#you-can-also-select-from-your-phones-music-library-12