To many in the 30-something and beyond generations,
YouTube is a strange phenomenon and a somewhat confusing business concept. Older generations do not fully understand what YouTube is about and generally avoid it. ‘Kids’ spending hour after hour on the computer making & sending silly video clips to each other What is that all about? In my day…Well YouTube is here to stay and that is that. And if it is here to stay, can it be used in the field of education?
Can the skills young people have developed in making and publishing YouTube videos be utilized in education?
Can the making of educational videos by students be used in the classroom and how beneficial might this be in improving student understand a topic?
Would a ‘hands-on’ approach to make a video essay allow students to better retain what they are learning?
This article will argue that the short answer to each of these questions is ‘yes’. The key is how is it to be done and what resources are out there to help.
Where did this idea come from?
Thank Ozzie.
The genesis of this idea started while I was standing under the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland. I was traveling on my own as I have recently been let go from my job (redundant in UK parlance) and decided to visit several places on my ‘to see before I die’ list.
While the Swiss mountains are breathtaking, I only had Ozzie to share it with and he wasn’t much good. Ozzie is a 3 inch tall blue and white soft-toy mouse which I found while working in the Australian Outback in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia some 13 years ago.
I suggested to a teacher friend of mine that I could photograph Ozzie in various exotic locations for her class of 5 year olds (who gave the ‘mascot-with-no-name’ his current title by the way). I took many photos in Switzerland, Prague and Amsterdam but more importantly ended up producing a series of video clips of his escapades abroad (‘Ozzie on Tour’ YouTube clips here).
I saw the enjoyment these 5 years had in seeing Ozzie on his travels and this morphed into an idea of showing older students places of interest and then maybe making basic video documentaries of historical places without the razzmatazz seen in television documentaries. My thinking was quite simple: when students visit a site on a school trip they see what is there today, not some high tech computer generated image.
The reality soon dawned on me that I was not particularly good at making these mini-documentaries myself. But
‘Why not let the students make the video documentaries themselves?’
This thought eventually led to my web site, Video History Today.
My thinking was quite simple. Kids today love making videos and sharing them via YouTube. Surely these interests and skills could (and should) be harnessed? If you can provide them with the basic raw video clips, a computer and a concise topic they could use their YouTubing skills to create an essay you can see and hear rather then an essay you can read.
This is the aim of Video History Today: a library of downloadable video clips accessible via the internet. Students can choose from a range of video clips recorded in Europe and the United States which can then be brought together to create a video essay. The main topics covered include the Holocaust, D-Day & Normandy 1944, The American Civil War and the Cold War.
Think about it for a moment.
To write an essay, you need to be given a topic; do some research; read a little; take notes; produce a 1000 word essay.
What about if the end product was not a written report but one you produced as a video documentary? Tell the story you would previously have written down using visuals. Make a commentary using your notes. Tell the story. Bring in your own video. Bring in your own photographs. get youtube watch hours