Video

Video Activities for the Languages Classroom

Using videos in the language classroom is one way of getting authentic language to the students.  In most cases, students can have access to your video activities via prepared video activities and flipped lessons in the classroom or at home, so accessibility is a strong feature and advantage when using videos.  

Link to my Youtube video channels.

Some suggested teaching ideas for video activities

Videos can be used at any stage of the teaching and learning process.  For languages, videos can be a great way to introduce, revise and review vocabulary, sentence patterns and language concepts.  With some of the products below, you can create and design video activities to also be formative and summative activities.  Following are a few suggested activities how I have used videos in the classroom.  

Collaborative group work: students can view a video together in pairs, taking notes, stopping, replaying, and discussing the content as they go.  With products like Educanon and Edpuzzle, strategically placed questions or references by the teacher, get the students thinking and add another activity apart from those mentioned above.

Flipped Lessons: Flipped lessons have been around for ages and similar to the collaborative group work idea, students can work not only in groups but also on their own.  The great thing about flipped lessons and using videos is that students can go over the material as many times as they need to master the content.  So for example, if they have missed a lesson, they can catch up on their own, take notes and discuss the content with the teacher. 

To view some of my flipped lessons, please go to my Narralakes Youtube channel. 

Screencasts -prepare your own video lessons!

Follow Ken's board Videos on Pinterest.

Set tasks to videos

Educanon 

Educanon is a free web based product that is a powerful tool for any teacher.  You can organize and set up your classes and students in the Dashborad by copying and paste lists from your computer. 

Creating: The teacher can create an activity via the Design page.  Look for a video or upload your own from a wide range of web based sources, such as Vimeo, Youtube, and the Khan Academy, just to mention a few.  Once you have found your video, past the url in the finder, Educanon finds the video and then you can start adding activities.  You can add questions and crop the video if you only want to use parts of it.  

Assigning:  Once you have created your video activity, you can assign a class from your list.

Sharing: The great thing with Educanon is that you can share it with students or anyone via Twitter, email or Facebook with the url code or embed it into your web page.  

Bulbs: Bulbs are basically your storage area for your videos and then assign classes or students to them, creating the "bulb" .  You can store the videos you have worked on and created or find new videos.  

Monitor: Another great feature of Educanon is that you can monitor your students, this is great for formative or summative assessments and as with most good products, grades can be exported and saved.  

Overall, I find Educanon an excellent product. The free version has most of the functions that any class teacher would need, not many of us would have more than 8 classes.  If you do need feel you need the extra functions the Basic version does not provide, the Premium and Blended School versions come at a reasonable price.  

                         Here's an example of part of one of my Educanon videos. 
             



Edpuzzle 

Zaption 

blubbr 


Captioning Videos

Youtube - but only if the videos are yours'.

Media Access Australia   If you have created your own videos and uploaded them to Youtube then adding captions to them is easy.  The main reason for that is that those videos belong to you and only you have the right to caption it.  To caption videos that do not belong to you, then there are not many options to adding captions.  You could ask the owner of the video to give you permission and allow you rights to caption their video, but that takes time and what happens if you cannot contact that person?  Another option is going to Media Access Australia. This site details how you can add captions legally to videos that belong to other people by using sites such as Amara.

Amara is an easy to use site that is free.  I recommend going through and watching a few of the instructional videos on Youtube, but if you have used sites such as Edpuzzle or Educanon, then Amara will not take long to work out.  The Amara interface is easy to use but the dashboard needs some time to get use to as previously edited videos are not placed in easy find.  This is a good product but if there are any similar ones out there, please let me know!