A 2019 Common Sense Media census found that children ages 8–12 average about five hours of screen time daily, and teens about seven and a half hours—not including school or homework assignments! These two age groups also view an average of almost an hour of video content each day (Rideout & Robb, 2019). They are constantly immersed in online content.
Students love spending hours watching videos from the YouTube elite. Ask your students who their favorite YouTube celebrities are. Figure out why. Maybe they’re not your style, but looking at popular YouTubers will give you some insight into what engages students.
This book doesn’t dive too far into any technology specifics on purpose—the result of an eye-opening presentation I did to a group of teachers working on their master’s degrees. I was sharing ways to integrate video into the classroom, using a presentation I’d done a dozen times before, but it had been six months since I had last shared it. Partway through my presentation, I had the teachers log onto Microsoft PowerPoint and try to download the Mix tab, only to find out that the Mix tab had gone away a couple of months earlier. That wasn’t helpful. We ended up finding an alternative, but this reminded me that technology is dynamic. At the rate technology changes, anything I could put in this book would be outdated before it even goes to print. You’ll find general ideas for technology and ways to use them, but for specific apps, websites, and tools connected to each recipe and section of this book, check out my website, mrstockrocks.com. There you’ll find video tutorials and explanations that dive deep into the latest and greatest tools to accomplish what I outline in the book.
To get started, check out the Awesome Sauce 101 playlist on YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLifJz8mRJxI3dCFS0jOCbR0e3JE2US094
WHY Face Time MATTERS
In college, I only had to take one math class. I’ve always been a decent math student and only needed to attend the test days to pass. I don’t say that to brag—just to point out the bizarre nature of the class. I was “taught” through a series of online videos that went through the required curriculum. I have absolutely no idea who my instructor was.
I skimmed through most of it, maybe rewatching a video once if I really needed to. Other than that, the class wasn’t helpful. In my classroom, I want the videos to feel like I am walking along with my students as they are learning. In an analysis of 6.9 million massive open online course (MOOC) video-watching sessions, Guo, Kim, and Rubin (2014) found that the most effective instruction videos incorporate some elements of the instructor speaking directly into the camera.
The internet is full of amazing video content I incorporate into my class. I still remember watching Bill Nye videos when I was a kid and being mesmerized by all the unique elements he introduced. There is nothing wrong with rocking some Bill Nye, but the majority of my videos have me in the video.
Videos in my classroom are an extension of myself. They are a means for me to be in a wide range of locations at one time. It’s like cloning a not-quite-as-awesome version of myself. In a perfect world, I would sit down and work one-on-one with each of my students every single day. I would love to guide them through their learning journeys and help them any time they needed it. However, the reality is I have twenty-five to thirty kids in my room each day, and I have to do my best to distribute myself as best as I can.
It comes down to this: I want to be the best teacher possible, and using these recipes gives me the chance to make the biggest impact on the rock-star students in my classroom.
THE Brain
The brain is fascinating. It is a complex network of over 100 billion neurons linked together in an elaborate system (Herculano-Houzel, 2009). Scientists are constantly making new discoveries about how different parts of the brain interact. It is too complex a topic to cover in just a short section of this book, so I would highly encourage you to check out the articles referenced in the bibliography.
THEORY INTO PRACTICE
One of my favorite concepts to teach is internal and external conflicts in story. I introduce the concept using one of the first videos I ever created for the classroom. You can check out the video here: youtu.be/UKkVrMIJeiI
These were all things I had to consider as I was planning out the video:
1. Sensory Memory. Students have to focus in on the information being delivered in the video and tune out the extraneous information in the room.
2. Working Memory. Students then focus in on the two concepts presented in the video: internal conflict and external conflict.
3. Long Term Memory. Students can connect these concepts to characters they know well (Batman and Joker from Batman comic book lore and Elsa from Disney’s Frozen).
I could have included video clips from Batman and Frozen, sound effects blaring for each slide transition, and flashing animated text, but each of these elements would have diverted student brain power from the learning task.
Cynthia Brame (2015) identifies three elements that are vital for video design and implementation to be effective: cognitive load, noncognitive elements that impact engagement, and features that promote active learning. This means that as you develop video content, you need to be aware of the strain placed on memory-storing processes, outside forces that might affect a viewer’s understanding of the material, and elements you can add to make the video a more interactive experience.
Marcy P. Driscoll defines cognitive load as “the strain that is put on working memory by the processing requirements of a learning task” (2005). Have you ever tried to open up a YouTube video, download a large file from your e-mail, and work on a PowerPoint presentation while having ten or more tabs open on your internet browser? That’s when you get the spinning icon or error message that lets you know something’s not right. Your computer is trying to do too much and is overwhelmed by all of the processes it’s trying to accomplish at one time. Your brain is like a computer in a lot of ways: If you overload its memory by trying to have it do too many things at once, it’ll struggle to load new information. However, if information can be connected to prior schema, connections use less processing power and larger quantities of information can be processed at one time.
For new information to be stored indefinitely it needs to travel through three modes of memory.
1. First, the learner uses sensory memory to determine which sensory signals deserve attention. The learner is constantly bombarded with information. For example, when students sit down to watch a video, they are processing the sensation of the chair they’re sitting in, the people around them, the posters on the wall, the case around the iPad, the pressure of the earbuds in their ears, and so on. All of these inputs are hitting the student, whose brain has to determine what is the most important, relevant information to focus on while tuning out the rest.
2. Next, information filters through working memory, which has a limited capacity. Your brain can only process four to five items in working memory at a time, and these stay in your brain for only around thirty seconds unless you do something with them. When I plan my videos for students, I try to present only one or two items of substantial information so as not to overload students’ working memory.
3. Finally, the information gets locked into long-term memory (Brame, 2015). When you can connect new information to previous information, it goes into long-term memory. The more connections you can make to existing knowledge, the more likely it is that new information will stick.
Cognitive load theory analyzes how this network of systems interacts to create new learning. Three types of