It was interesting to hear from my classmates last Monday about the videos that they remember watching in their past classes. Some people said they remember watching fun videos that really helped with learning information in the class, and others said they remember taking naps or checking their phones while the videos played. I think this shows that it’s really important to put time into choosing videos for your class so that your students don’t think it’s a time for them to rest their eyes or check social media. I remember my least favorite part of my biology class was actually watching the videos that my teacher showed. The videos were long, boring, and all very similar because she got them from the same website. Since there was no variety, the videos became even more boring and I struggled to pay attention or retain any information from them. The biggest problem for me was that there was hardly any color or exciting visuals in the videos, along with the monotone voice that made me want to fall asleep. My number one tip: don’t show videos like this if you want your students attention!
So how do you pick the right videos for your class? Most importantly, pick a video that will grab your students attention. You can’t expect all your students to like the subject you’re teaching so you need to pick a video that will really get your students interested. Videos with exciting tones of voice, visuals, and sounds are a great way to perk interests. Also, short and sweet videos may be best to keep your students attention. If the video is on the longer side, pause every once in awhile to have discussions and answer questions. Choosing videos that are relatable to the students and make them laugh is another way to keep them engaged and interested. Videos can make the class fun while aiding in the process of teaching new information.
It’s not only about the video you choose, but about how you use that video as a tool to help teach your lesson. Some ideas are having class discussions, having writing assignments or quizzes, or giving a lecture about the information in the video. Also, providing guided notes to your students for the video is a good way to help with any discussions or assignments about the video. It’s highly important to incorporate all of these different types of teaching methods into the lesson along with the video to accommodate for different types of learners. For example, in my future math classroom I may show a Khan academy video to aid in teaching some of my lessons. Along with showing the video, I could lecture about the information that was shown and I could ask students to solve problems on the board. The video would help visual learners, lecturing would help auditory learners, while working out problems on the board would help kinesthetic learners.
Although videos can be a big help in the classroom, technology isn’t always a necessity when teaching lessons. Teachers may feel pressured to use lots of technology in their classroom because of the popularity of technology in education and all other aspects of life. It’s important not to feel pressured to always use technology in the classroom because sometimes it is not beneficial. As I said before, videos are a great way to engage students, but don’t show a video if it’s only purpose is adding some aspect of tech into the class. When I become a math teacher I may occasionally use videos if I think it will aid in the learning process, but I think simple tasks such as explaining problems on the board and allowing students to work out problems on paper are some of the best ways to teach and learn mathematics. Overall, it is important not to use technology to teach your class, but to teach with technology.