• English language arts: Give students a short story or fable. Have them use the graphic-novel format to recreate the story using images. The annotations students place over the base image should provide clarification, and the inserted hyperlinks should link to websites to provide additional information and make the images interactive.
• Mathematics: In a unit covering maximizing area, have students illustrate the situation of a given problem by drawing a picture of what they maximize, and then have them annotate it with a mathematical solution to the problem.
• Social science: Review with students the key reasons why the United States chose to become involved in World War II. Have student groups collaborate to select or create images to which they can apply special-effects filters that retell the story of U.S. involvement.
• Career and technical education: In woodshop class, have students snap a picture of a piece of equipment and then annotate key things to remember about its special features or safety guidelines. After having students share the images using the classroom LMS, print the pictures and post them in the shop as safety reminders. If you have a class website, post the images there to maintain any interactive elements such as links to external resources.
Using Video to Demonstrate Learning
No matter what topic we teach, we all know one thing about our students—they love to watch videos. It doesn’t matter whether they come from YouTube (www.youtube.com), Vimeo (https://vimeo.com), or some other platform. Although watching video is generally a very passive activity, making videos often brings out a creative side in students that other media do not. Video use is also increasing in professional workplaces. For example, many students will end up doing some sort of marketing, a field in which marketers increasingly use video to help products and services stand out from other options. According to Mary Lister (2017), writing at the online advertising blog WordStream:
• 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter.
• YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of total internet users.
• 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week.
• More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day.
• More video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major U.S. television networks have created in 30 years.
• 87% of online marketers use video content.
There is no doubt video already plays, and will continue to play, a starring role in the professional world. It doesn’t stop there, however. By allowing students to create informational videos in our classrooms and then watching what they come up with, even teachers who are experts on a particular subject open themselves up to seeing topics differently than they may be used to. For example, after watching an effective student-created video, you might opt to reteach a lesson using the method the student captured in the video.
In creating their work, allow students to produce videos using whatever tools they find most convenient for them. Video production can be very simple or complex depending on what equipment students have access to for recording and editing. We explore some of the digital tools students can use in this NOW lesson set. Using these tools, you may have students create short videos that demonstrate basic understanding of a classroom topic, or their videos could cover entire units of study as a means of review.
Novice: Recording Short Videos
Learning goal:
I can create, save, and upload short videos that demonstrate my learning.
Making short videos gives high school students a great way to get involved in and take ownership of learning concepts in the classroom. In the classroom, we have found that when students work with nonlinguistic representations, images, and multimedia, they often remember the experience better in comparison to text-based lessons. Therefore, this lesson’s purpose is to have students create videos that help them better remember concepts.
Some students will come to class with experience creating videos while others will not have that experience. Having students with different experience levels work in groups can help distribute knowledge across the entire classroom. Once they create their videos, students can share them with peers using the classroom LMS or a video-hosting site, such as YouTube or Vimeo.
Students can use several video-creation apps to record video, including iMovie (www.apple.com/imovie), Animoto (https://animoto.com), and WeVideo (www.wevideo.com), but for recording simple videos, they can most easily use whichever camera app their digital device includes by default.
Process: Recording a Simple Video
Use the following three steps to have students record a short, simple video.
1. Have students think about a classroom learning topic they want to discuss in a video and then select a video-recording app to use for their project. Because this lesson’s goal is to have students explain some aspect of their learning, let individual students or small groups define the purpose of their video and decide how they plan on recording the video, what props they might need, and what supporting resources they might need.
2. Planning is key to the success of this lesson. Before any cameras start rolling, you should provide students about half a class period to create a plan, and then ask them to film the video outside of class if possible. The best videos are short and memorable, so ask students to create videos from thirty seconds to three minutes in length. Let them have fun explaining what they have learned.
3. Have students save and export or share their work. Although this may include posting the projects to the classroom LMS, most video-creation apps allow you to directly export projects to popular video-hosting services like YouTube and Vimeo. WeVideo allows users to publish directly to the WeVideo website. Most video-hosting services allow students to select if they want to make their published video private or public. If you have students post their videos to one of these platforms, have them also share links to their videos on the classroom LMS.
TEACHING TIP
Students can make short videos on most classrooms’ instructional pillars. You can feature these videos during a review session, before an assessment, or show videos from one class to another class. You might even discover some hidden acting talent in your students.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TECH TIPS