Monday, August 16, 2010

Week 5

One of the ways I can provide is to have groups of students create movies for topics such as environment, Australian culture or events. For example, a teacher will form groups of students and let them choose the topic for their movies. A group of students can go around the school (or outside of school) in order to find some information related to their topics and/or interview other students, and they should record them to upload to their movies. Finally, students will be asked to present their movies and reports. Their movies should be clear and visible; however, creating movies is only the way to present; the important part is what students have learnt about their topics using these tools. This approach engages students will motivate students since they need to use cameras and microphones with other group members.




I will say that YouTube or other videos are utilized both for engagement of interest and learning. For example, teachers show YouTube video about the environment, and then teachers provide handouts with questions related to the video. Then the whole class can discuss and share their ideas about what they think about the environment.
When students see and hear that the video is from YouTube, that video will fascinate them as all of them know what YouTube is. Also most students are visual learners. Once teachers tell students that they are going to watch a video, they are already interested in it. Therefore, YouTube can be used to engage students’ interests. If teachers prepare handouts like above, they need to watch carefully what the content of video is to prepare their answers. Also, when they verbalize and share their ideas, they learn from videos and peers. As a result, YouTube or other videos are not only the entertainment but also the tool for teaching and learning.

As YouTube video above shows, teachers can utilize those videos as instructions.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with you. YouTube is one of effective tools for teaching. Students would be interested in watching YouTube clips in classes. In my opinion, Visual learning is easy to understand for many students. So, using YouTube videos in classes are going work effectively for students' learning.

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  2. Thank you, tae23.
    I am pretty sure that most of students in classes are visual learners due to technology improvement. Also, we have saying:'The picture is worth a thousand words'!

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