Digital Video Goes to School

Handler, M. & Hoffenberg, H. (2001). Digital video goes to school. Learning & Leading with Technology, 29 (2), 11-15.

1. What skills are students developing in the process of making a video?
Students find video motivational and they demonstrate higher-level thinking skills when producing digital video clips. In the process of creating a video, students are practicing many skills, including the technical skills involved in making and editing a video, and visual literacy skills. Students also develop the higher-level thinking skills of analyzing and synthesizing the information they want to present as they come up with a point or focus for their work and as they decide what details to include in their videos. Meaningful tools in the hands of students create lifelong learners, preparing students for the challenges they will face in a digital world.

2. What type of video formats fit well as a culminating activity?
Formats for a video as the final reporting of a project, whether a project-based learning experience or a traditional research project, include video newscasts, documentaries, infomercials, and video clips for a Web page or multimedia presentation.

3. What types of curriculum characteristics make sense for video?
Educators must aim for curriculum-driven technology use, not technology-driven curriculum. Video is a natural fit when you want to capture emotion, heritage or culture, memorable experiences, change over time, a process, a phenomenon in nature, and/or a process slowed to view frame by frame to better understand it.

4. Briefly describe the guidelines for video use.
In order for students to become virtually literate, it is important, as with all technology tools, to use it in appropriate ways to expand the learning environment. As teachers, we have taught students the grammar of writing and the guidelines for effective oral communication to make them good communicators with their selected audiences, and it is our responsibility to help them learn and use the guidelines for communicating with audiences using what we know about the rules and guidelines for visual communication tools, in this case video. Planning ahead is a key component in creating any presentation, including visual documents. In creating a video project, students must choose a subject with which they are familiar with, consider the audience and purpose, spend time planning and storyboarding, and thinking about the kind of shots required to best convey the message. Throughout the planning, students must consider the relationship between visual communication and the content as they organize their work.