Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

For this week’s EdTech class, we looked at the benefits of using video and podcasts as educational tools in the classroom. Our instructor showed us a few of the advantages such as being able to use slow motion, the effective use of time-lapse, the possibilities of 360 virtual reality, being able to screencast, and more. It’s not difficult to see how beneficial many of these ideas would be in the classroom, especially when considering our students are all growing up in this world of technology and will almost certainly be using these skills once they’ve graduated and move out into the real world.

We had a guest speaker come in from the Digital Scholarship Commons in the UVic library who gave us a few demonstrations of the video editing and then gave us some tasks to work on using iMovie. As someone who is familiar with video editing, having used this skill to create and edit short films, as well as edit videos for my YouTube channel, it felt nice to be somewhat in my comfort zone while also still being able to pick up a few new techniques.

The first video I edited was using green screen, something I have a limited amount of experience with and am by no means an expert. We took a video of chickens that was filmed in front of a green screen and combined that with a scene from under the ocean that showed schools of fish swimming around. This was further added to by putting in some ocean sounds, a short opening credit sequence and–boom–the video is done. I’ve decided to call this masterpiece, Chickens Under the Sea. Take a look below if you want to check it out.

Chickens Under the Sea (2021)

Next, I decided to tinker with slow motion using a short clip of a guy doing a jump on his mountain bike. Just as he is about to do the jump, I used slow motion to highlight how cool his jump really is. This was bolstered with some ‘rad’ music I found in the public domain. Hence, the title of my second masterpiece in only one afternoon is aptly called Rad Biker. I think you’ll agree that the music really brings the clip to life and sets the tone well, much the same way Hitchcock used the infamous screeching music in the shower scene of Psycho. We’re talking big time stuff here, people. Have a gander for yourself.

Rad Biker (2021)

All kidding aside, I can easily see how using videos like these would be a useful tool for young learners. Having grown up in this age of technology, young people these days are used to engaging with this type of technology and, in fact, it seems to connect with them on a more personal level. If teachers had tried more to utilize the technology of my day, like video games or movies, in the classroom, I can say without a doubt I would have been more interested in my classes. Not to say that I had no interest at all, but when I look back, most of my memories are from the social situations at school with friends, going on field trips or playing on the sports teams; very few of my memories are from anything unique or exciting that was done in the classroom.

One thing we’ve been learning through the Teacher Ed course is how important it is to use a multimodality of teaching methods, which means to present and use different ways of learning in the classroom, be it visual, audio, kinaesthetic or any other way that addresses and speaks to the needs and preferences of our students. In the past, teachers always taught to the majority rather than appealing to the margins; this often resulted in those who had slower or different learning processes, or those who perhaps had disabilities or (undiagnosed) learning disabilities not getting much value out of their educations. It also sometimes meant that those who were more advanced did not receive the type of challenges that they needed, resulting in boredom. As someone who will soon be in the classroom teaching and sculpting young minds, I want to be mindful of the different ways I can reach young people, especially those on the periphery.

Overall, this was a useful lesson, not only for the refresher in using and editing video, but also as a reminder to utilize different ways of learning–such as these types of technology–in the classroom. Now one month into the program, I’m starting to synthesizethe various things learned throughout our different courses to see the big picture of what we need to do to be successful educators and send our students out into the world prepared to meet all of the challenges they will face in the ever-competitive and changing world.