The value of a medium is based on its application. When considering the instructional value of audio or video resources, it’s important to consider what the purpose the resource serves.
The evocative power of audio is often under valued. Old time radio drama brought the Shadow and Green Hornet to America’s living rooms alongside works by Moliere and Dylan Thomas. From about 1920 to 1950, radio drama provided a window on the world with the voices and stories from far away. Rock and roll changed that dynamic when music – and the rapidly changing soundscape it provided – became portable. Most people over 20 years of age have a song or two that evokes a time or place, a memory of the past. From “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Leader of the Pack” to “Aquarius” to “Hotel California,” “Truckin’,” and “Milkshake”, the beat goes on.
Video, the electronic child of the movie, carries similar freight, if not so poignantly evocative. From the Golden Age of TV with the hour long productions from Philco Television Theatre to Playhouse 90, to Twilight Zone and the development of Late Night and then Early Morning, the use of TV to bring news and sports, and even music when MTV broke into the space with music videos, Americans gathered around the flickering electric fire.
Educators have tried to use these tools since the early days of educational radio in the 20s and 30s and the ‘talking head’ era of educational television. Radio never caught on and resistance to the use of television in education persists today, even as the use of audio and video resources for learning expand daily. Cable television, that “57 channels and nothing on” wasteland, provides 24-hour a day access to news, weather, cooking, home decorating, and even hunting and fishing. Personal computers and the internet provide access to audio and video archives which grown by thousands — if not millions — of choices every day. YouTube viewers from last month alone, if gathered into a single country, would be the 17th largest country in the world. The most watched video has 101million views while Mexico only has 106million people. Compare that to top-rated TV shows with fewer than 10million viewers.
Yet educators struggle with basic questions like, “Is this medium effective?”
The problem is that it’s the wrong question. Any medium might be effective if applied properly. A book works well when teaching “Tom Sawyer” but perhaps a movie might be illustrative when teaching “Romeo and Juliett.” A text that brings together a variety of resources and viewpoints can be helpful when dealing with an amorphous, ill-defined knowledge space, where one of James Burke’s “Connections” episodes might provide insight into the evolution of scientific thought.
For many teachers, acquisition of adequate resources becomes the challenge. Between having to deal with procurement challenges and the cost of obtaining the resources, to say nothing of the scheduling issues, folding such resources into an educational experience becomes more than daunting. Yet pressure to use the tools comes from all sides and well-intentioned but in-expert efforts yield disappointing results and the cycle of disappointment continues.
Recorded lectures, mostly, suck. Recording a teacher’s talking head fails to use the power of the moving picture to impart motion over time. Usually it even fails to evoke a sympathetic emotional response for the speaker. Similarly, an audio track alone – except in the cases where the speaker is passionate about the subject and able to express that passion in a meaningful way through speech – fails to provide sufficient instructional merit to off-set the costs of production and distribution.
In my opinion, one answer to this conundrum is collaboration. The challenge is finding the time to develop the expertise to do something meaningful. Recording audio for students to hear if they missed the class or for review is cheap, but inefficient for learning, but what if the essence of the class were distilled from the 50 minute hour of logistics and administration to a five minute performance of content? If the day’s topic is distilled, scripted, and performed, the performance recorded, then that recording can be used both in class, and for review. This takes time, effort, and expertise to do well, which is why collaboration is the key. Finding a team of teachers who can master some aspect of the production – writing, producing, reading, editing, etc — and then sharing the resulting product across classrooms amortizes the cost of production (the time) across many more students and provides a much more consistent and valuable message.
September 20th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Audio and video can be used in ways that make it effective, but I think that a lot of teachers use audio and video to meet that technology requirement. In these cases video and audio are misused. When my kids study polar animals I always show them video clips from the internet or from movies. This allows them to visualize the different animals and actually seem them in their habitat. I could talk and talk about what the animals look like, but the kids would not get a clear picture.
One of the things that I hate to see are kids only listening to the audio text that comes with basals in reading class. I know teachers that use the CD’s to teach. They make the kids listen to the story over and over and over and expect them to learn all of the words and maintain interest. I think that the CDs can be used in class, but I do not think they should be used everyday. They serve no educational purpose in this manner.
September 20th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
There would be great amounts of time that would need to go into making audio and video work effectively. “This takes time, effort, and expertise to do well, which is why collaboration is the key.” I find it may be hard to find teachers in my building that would want to take on such a task. Collaberation is great when you find people willing to do it. Can these virtual communities like Skype and Tapped in be a means of collaberation?
September 20th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
My! What an interesting idea!
September 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I think you have a point Amy. I have trouble finding anyone willing to work on an audio video project but by talking to teachers at other schools, via conferences, seems to be the most effective way. I have met some other teachers at the National Association of Gifted Children and the KTLC conference who have proved to be valuable resources in the field of technology. Even though collaboration among teachers at the same school or even in the same district may seem simpler, it may not always produce the best results.
I do not necessarily agree that simple audio lectures may not be helpful. When I was in college, I had an Old Testament instructor that ad a deep commanding voice. His lectures were always interesting and his voice had that unique captivating presence that kept your attention from the first word to the last. He always recorded his lectures and left copies in the library for those who were absent or for test review. Even though the students did not see his antics in class, they did learn. I know that this is far from the norm, but in his case, it worked.
Also, youtube has several videos available that are great educational add ins, but the local school district has blocked it. I know that there is also inappropriate content available on youtube but there should be some allowance for educational content. I saw a fifth grade class last year that was studying how a bill becomes a law and they watched “I’m Just a Bill” (Schoolhouse Rock) on youtube. The kids loved it and you could hear them days later singing the song but this year that is not an option, thanks to the wonderful proxy.
September 20th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Frederick Wootan in his book “Not In my Classroom” recommends recording and scripting performances of the major concepts you cover in your classroom as well. Logistically, from my background in TV, it can take a little while to get a procedure together and all the kinks ironed out, but as long as you have a dedicated team for the production, after about 3 attempts you’ve got it all working well. Plan well, begin with a goal, and you will be the better for it in the long run.
September 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
if you’re having problems finding people willing to collaborate, it may be worthwhile to expand out of your own department. If you’re delivering a sample lecture on literary elements, and the biology teacher does the best job of performing a script than an english teacher, who cares as long as the kids are engaged? In fact, seeing the teacher in a different light will be good for the teacher AND the students as well.
September 21st, 2008 at 12:44 am
Finding willing participants is usually the hardest part of putting together a project like this. Why not use students for this as well? This would not necessarily be your own students, but maybe even students from middles schools or high schools. Networking with teachers on your team, in your building, district, or even ones on the web are also a possibility in making this medium more interesting.
September 21st, 2008 at 2:09 am
I find that I like to ued audio and video in social studies when the audio or video can create an image in students minds about a location or idea better than I can without it. Just because there is a moving picture on a screen does not mean it creates the image you want any better than a stick man drawn on the board or a textbook so be careful. I have found that United Streaming by Discovery Education is a great tool for in classroom use. It provides videos most every subject at most every grade and lesson ideas correlated to your states content. Although I do not know how well it would work in math or science courses it works well in the social studies classroom. Videos are offered at lengths from a few minutes to over an hour, or multiple part longer vidoes. The videos are also availbe to be downloaded and played from your computer or streamed via the internet. The videos are also broken down into shorter sections if you would rather watch only snippets. You can also edit the clips to suit your needs. The site also has audio clips and pictures as well. One thing I especially like is that you can create accounts for the students to use where they can view content you have approved for particular lessons. United Streaming is offered to KY schools in partnership with KET if I am not mistaken and in most schools the libararing can set you up an account.
September 21st, 2008 at 2:11 am
I forgot to mention that if your school allows students to be on film, students can often make great short films to show in class in situations where student presentations are called for. This not only helps students to learn new technology but because the actually made the movies they seem to be more interested, even in the work of their classmates.
September 21st, 2008 at 3:21 am
When does this collaboration take place? Can it be a PD? We had a technology committee at our school, is it something that they could collaborate with the teachers wanting to do this in their classrooms, yes I think so. Again finding the time after school is the issue, but if teachers want success in their classrooms and want change to work, they will find the time.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I agree that collaboration can work wonders. Imagine a school where teachers worked together to make one of the best educational experiences for their students….then learning would really take place. In this age of technology, there are so many teachers who struggle with technological issues. Many do not know HOW to use their computer. I think that this is why so many people still use audio and video to reinforce teaching.
Getting back to the post, I agree that any medium that is applied in a proper way can be effective. This is where collaboration comes in. We can be so much more creative by working together and this could help benefit our students so much more. This is probably one of the most challenging things in many schools today. But, if we could just come together we would learn so much from each other…
September 21st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Yes, I agree Kim. We need to come together to help each other. With all the mediums coming into our classrooms, some technology ignorant people struggle. They may be excellent teachers, but lack the fundamentals necessary to operate their equipment efficiently. We aren’t in competition to be the best teacher, we are ALL their to help the students.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Collaboration makes the task less daunting. There are so many obstacles to overcome ie as a group, all the third and fourth grade teachers in my content area have been locating resources online to augment lessons and downlaoding either the resource (ie video clip etc) or the link into a folder on the common network for all of us to access quickly (including students for indep exploration). Now I have been told that we are ‘clogging’ the network system and we are not allowed to create such a folder. We are back to each of us spending time finding, bookmarking our own resources on each computer in the classroom that we want students to use to access material. Increases the time consumption significantly.
September 24th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Consider a webbased tagging tool like Delicious or Furl.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:06 am
There are so many obstacles when it comes to this issue, for me. There are so many limitations at the school where I work on what we are allowed to use in our classrooms. Even the things that I thought would be great tools are often looked down upon by the “higher ups”. The problem is mainly misuse of video and audio. Using these things to replace actual instruction has lead to the complete elimination of video, audio, etc. even when it would be a great resource.