Video+Production

= Video Production = Barbara Kerdolff

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 * Description and Uses of Technology **

Thomas Edison recognized that education could benefit from his invention for recording and projecting pictures. “As early as 1912, Edison’s Home Kinetoscope was being demonstrated in local schools” (Hammond, 2010). What would Edison think about the advances made in video recording and the resulting opportunities in education today?

Video production, or videography, captures moving images on electronic media such as disks and camcorders. The video production process involves a written plan, storyboard, script, staging, shooting, editing, and final video production. Storyboards were developed by Walt Disney in the 1930’s and are pictorial sequences of the action in a video. Depending on the video project, one person with a camcorder may be required or a crew with multiple camera setups and a sound technician.

With many video camcorders selling for under $200.00 and user-friendly editing software available at reasonable costs (e.g., Windows Movie Maker or Apple Computer’s iMovie), video production in the classroom is a viable option. DVD burners are commonly available for storage. Software like Apple’s Quicktime Pro can be used to compress video for CD storage.

Educators can use video production as a tool for creating content. This fact led educators (Bell & Bull, 2010) to outline how the production or use of video can enhance many content areas from social studies and science to physical education in Table 1, Appendix A of this article. In addition to Appendix A, consider the ten ways Kathleen Tyner (Tyner, 2010) suggests to use video in the classroom - 1) Student conducted interviews, 2) Skit production, 3) Students can teach their parents how to play a math game, 4) Teachers can send home videos of the student playing a musical instrument 5) Slide shows, 6) Cultural video exchanges, 7) Student self-evaluation of their own reading skills, 8) Record student responses to reading assignments, 9) Video tape student presentations, and 10) Video tape tips for being ‘green’ at school.

The educational benefits of video production are not limited to students in the traditional school classroom. Teachers, themselves, use video production for educational research and analysis of teaching methods. Other professions have also greatly benefited from video production. Doctors can watch a surgery procedure, pausing to focus on techniques. Industrial companies frequently produce training videos that are site and job specific to reduce injury to workers. Multinational businesses can record training material in one country and send the DVD or stream the video to employees in another country. Marketing kiosks at shopping centers use video to explain a product. Scientists can video record the behavior of rare species to determine ways to increase survival rates. These are only a few of the omnipresent applications of video production.


 * Important Findings and Outcomes **

Prior to video cameras and editing software, teachers generally used films to introduce a topic or idea, furnish details...or act as a summary (Hartley, 1965). This use of video film, consistent with objectivist pedagogy, placed the student as the receiver of information. Over time, students have migrated to integrated and constructivist learning, with video as one tool for constructing their own meaning from learning. Now “Web 2.0” savvy students can create video with cell phones and camcorders and post their work to the Internet. The video production audience is no longer limited to 25 students in a classroom, but potentially is a worldwide audience.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Video creation is a platform for students to creatively express their knowledge by analyzing, synthesizing and communicating what they have learned (Hofer & Harris, 2009). Besides critical thinking skills, the use of reading and writing skills are inherent in the video production process. Storyboard layouts require sequential, organized thought. Video scripts help develop student writing skills. Editing requires analytical thinking. The video production process incorporates peer-to-peer and peer-to-teacher collaboration. If the student has been thorough in planning the video production, with clear objectives for speakers, staging, shooting, and editing, then visual and auditory learners will benefit as well as the video creator (Bell & Bull, 2010).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Best practice methods for teaching video production include: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">1) Use of a real problem with a targeted audience, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">2) Instructional strategies to teach video production concepts, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">3) Teacher demonstrations, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">4) Integration of the subject content with textbooks and worksheets, and <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">5) Teachers acting as facilitators who coach students, ask questions, and keep students on task.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Burn and Reed (1999) found one successful instructional strategy to teach video production was modeling editing processes on whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards, or SMART boards, work well for storyboard creation since students can move pictures to different locations on the board. Sweetlove (2001) found peer tutoring valuable in teaching the use of iMovie to 11-year-olds. Burn and Parker (2003) found that collaboration between teachers of art, English, media, and music was productive when helping 10-year-old students create an animation.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">If you are an educator and are wondering how to assess student video productions, consider the following. In a research study involving teachers who teach video production, teachers recommended assessing each step of the video process (written plan, storyboard, script, staging, shooting, editing, and final production) through the use of rubrics (Norton, 2010). One teacher expressed that the use of video production as a culminating project allowed “students to see and learn from their mistakes” and “to get instant feedback by watching what they had created” (Norton, 2010). Students can develop self-assessment skills throughout the video production process.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">With the use of best practice methods for video production, educators can succeed in improving student content knowledge. In a research study using objective tests, video production was shown to improve student test scores over previous units and previous years of the same material. A seventh-grade language arts teacher wrote, “Students demonstrated a higher level of understanding. They scored around 15% higher than last year using their storyboards for their cumulative video projects” (Norton, 2010). Teacher observations of students, surveys, and parent comments also concluded that students had improved content learning. Pre-service teachers in college noted similar outcomes when learning to create video productions. “Through presentations and rubrics, samples, surveys, and anecdotal comments from their teacher journals, teacher-learners demonstrated a strong connection between content learning and the final video” (Norton, 2010).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Not only students benefit from video production, but teachers do as well. "Empirical research has consistently found that teachers benefit from the immediate, rich, and detailed medium of authentic classroom video as a material in professional learning” (Calandra, Dias, & Dias, 2006; Newhouse, Lane & Brown, 2007; Rich & Hannafin, 2009). Teachers who are required to teach within segmented frameworks, with timed periods for engaging, exploring, explaining, and elaborating on a subject, can use video to observe the whole sequence for effectiveness. Pre-service and in-service teachers can benefit from the observation of different classroom techniques from the perspective of classroom management and content presentation.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">To maximize the use of video production as a tool in the classroom, teachers and students need to be aware of possible pitfalls. Some students may learn the video production techniques without developing the content knowledge associated with the project. Students using a documentary format may inject their own editorial goal or slanted perspective. Another broader issue is that image and information overload could decrease student content knowledge.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Practical issues with video production include: 1) too few video recorders available for many student groups, 2) no quiet place to film, 3) inadequate lighting and collaboration with other teachers, and 4) high humidity conditions. Additionally, video production often requires more classroom time, personnel, and teacher training than is available in many schools (Norton, 2010). The ability of the teacher to relay concepts of video production will affect video quality. Therefore, ongoing teacher training in video production would, ideally, be provided by school districts or colleges.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">In response to time restraints, several teacher educators have described changes in their practices, moving from exhaustive video production projects to shorter, more structured processes, such as image montages (Hammond, 2010). Resourceful teachers have garnered parent volunteers to assist with video projects. With planning and training, many issues with video production can be alleviated, so that student creativity and knowledge can blossom.


 * Emerging Trends and Open Issues **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Patterns of communication are evolving among students and teachers. The current generation of cell phones with video recording capability combined with broadcasting on websites has changed the way in which video is created and consumed (Gannes, 2009). “In the first year of use after YouTube was established, individual users created and contributed more video recordings than the three original television networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) had produced in the half century since they were founded. Five years later, hundreds of thousands of videos were uploaded by a global community to YouTube every day, at a rate of more than 20 hours of video per minute” (YouTube, 2009). In 2011, approximately two billion videos are watched on YouTube everyday (YouTube, 2011).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As technology has changed, so have educators and educational institutions. More teachers are learning to produce and share their own video productions (e.g.,TeacherTube.com) or coach students through the process of video creation and sharing (e.g., www.primaryaccess.org). Colleges and universities are migrating toward providing more online courses, which can embed video to provide another dimension for student learning. Embedded video can range from short clips to augment course content to an entire lecture.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Another trend is to blend digital print with video in textbooks and newspapers. In 2009, the state of Virginia released an online physics textbook (http://www.doe.virginia.gov/news/news release/2009/mar16shtml) and Governor Schwarzenegger proposed hardcover books be replaced with digital textbooks in California schools (http://www.ourfutureplanet.org/news/258-arnold-schwarzenegger-books-versus-computers). A new generation of digital readers such as Apple’s iPad and other portable devices that are emerging will make it increasingly likely that tomorrow’s students will access texts on handheld devices that support embedded video.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Current software makes it easier to remix or rearrange multiple clips of video. Digital video can be overlaid with graphical or numeric data and analyzed in combination with other tools like Geometer’s Sketchpad (in math class) or Logger Pro (in science). Digital video can include still images with narration and music (including maps, documents, audio clips, and video clips), animations such as Flash movies, and screen casts (i.e., an edited recording of a computer screen) in addition to traditional video (Bell & Bull, 2010).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">School district policy on the use of copyrighted material isn’t always clear or defined. Teachers and students embarking on video production will need to be aware of their school district’s fair-use guidelines, if available, and the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which is delineated at the website for The Center for Social Media (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/). Since software makes the remixing of videos possible, students can readily meet one of the fair-use principles, which allows for the re-purposing or transformation of copyrighted media for educational purposes.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Observation and research reveals that today’s students are adept at multitasking with multiple media. Increasingly, “the millennial generation thinks of messages and meanings multimodally—not just in terms of printed words, but also in terms of images and music. Young people listen while they watch, while they click, and while they write” (Norton, 2010). Accommodating the media habits of this generation of students presents a challenge for educators (Bell & Bull, 2010). One proven instructional strategy that acknowledges student media habits, engages students, and expands student content knowledge and critical thinking skills is video production.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The education of students, teachers and professionals took a leap forward with Thomas Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope. He likely would be awed by video technology innovations, which have enabled and challenged teachers to “discover exciting and novel ways to engage and motivate their students in learning subject matter content, thus meeting the diverse needs of their learners” (Sweeder, 2007).


 * Appendix A **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Table 1 Student Engagement with Digital Video by Content Area** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze video as a historical artifact or scrutinize political ads or product commercials to encourage critical thinking. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create mini-documentaries about historical events to hone research and interpretive skills or make movies about current cultural customs and traditions to broaden students’ perspectives. (Hammond & Lee, 2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">invite observation and inference. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze video to make predictions, find patterns, take measurements, or determine classifications. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create video of events and scientific phenomena that students have an interest in exploring further or that <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">present students’ understanding of a concept. (Park, 2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze motion mathematically or examine the pattern and symmetry of choreographed dance, for example, or <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">marching bands. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create video that enacts a specific function or solves a mathematical problem or demonstrates understanding of a mathematical concept. (Niess & Walker, 2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Language Arts || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video that engages students in meaning making and interpretation. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze video to consider the effectiveness of combinations of spoken word, print text, soundtrack, image, and motion. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create video as a multimodal text to express ideas and connect with an audience. (Young & Kajder, 2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">builds prior knowledge and engages students in the topic or view video renditions of fiction and drama for critical comparisons. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze students’ reading performances for self-reflection and feedback. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create videos that demonstrate reading and composition skills or reading comprehension. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">(Michael McKenna & Carrie Simkin, //Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, Vol. 10, No.//1 communication February 16, 2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Education || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video of others’ skill performance to learn techniques. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Analyze students’ skill performance for both self-evaluation and teacher feedback. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create digital video clips of others’ skills or performances to demonstrate understanding or make fitness/wellness advocacy/public service announcement videos for an audience. (Jennifer Krause, personal communication, February 13, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">2010) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Education || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video clips of everyday conversations in films or television broadcasts or music that can be replayed and <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">processed in multiple ways. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Interact with native speakers through live video conferencing. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Create video of student conversations or skits or narrations of past events that demonstrate language mastery. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">(Ruth Ferree, personal communication, February 16, 2010) ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Subject Area** || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Student Activity** ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Social Studies || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video clips of people and places outside of students’ local experiences and historical reenactments.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Science || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video clips of phenomena that engage them in scientific questions, elaborate on or apply a concept, or
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Mathematics || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> • Watch video-recorded events to visualize mathematics in nature and art and to set contexts for mathematical inquiry.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">English
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Reading || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">• Watch video as a prereading visualization activity that
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Physical
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Languages
 * Note || Additional references are provided below for further exploration of video production. ||


 * References **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Bell, L., Bull, G. (2010). Digital video and teaching. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10 (1), 1-6.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Fadde, Peter; Rich, Peter (2010, Jan/Feb). Guerrilla Video: A New Protocol for Producing Classroom Video. Educational Technology, Issue 1, 4-8.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Gayeski, D.M. (1991). Corporate and instructional video (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Geelan, David. (2010). Technological and methodological challenges of using classroom video to analyze physics teachers’ explanations//.// International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 4 (3), 225-232.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Hammond, T. C., Lee, J. K. (2010). Editorial: Digital video and social studies. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10 (1), 124-132.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Hayden, K., Ouyang, Y, Scinski, L., Olszewski, B., & Bielefeldt, T. (2011). Increasing student interest and attitudes in STEM: Professional development and activities to engage and inspire learners. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 11 (1), 47-69.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Hughes, J., & Robertson, L. (2010). Transforming practice: Using digital video to engage students. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1), 20-37.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Jonassen, D. H. (2003). Learning to solve problems with technology : a constructivist perspective. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Merrill.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Krpata, Laura (2011). Enlighten: Architecture for a 21st Century Learning Model. Unpublished masters thesis, University of Cincinnati.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Niess, M. L. & Walker, J. M. (2010). Guest editorial: Digital videos as tools for learning mathematics//.// Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1), 100-105.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Norton, P., Hathaway, D. (2010). Video production as an instructional strategy: Content Learning and teacher practice. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education//,// 10, (1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol10/iss1/currentpractice/article2.cfm.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Otrel-Cass, Kathrin; Cowie, Bronwen; Maguire, Michael. Waikato (2010) Taking video cameras into the classroom. Journal of Education, 15, (2), 109-118.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Park, John (2010, Jan) Editorial: Preparing Teachers to Use Digital Video in the Science Classroom. Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education//,// 10, (1), 119-123.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Parker, C. E. (2011). Editorial: Innovative professional development for STEM workforce development. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 11 (1), 1-5.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Sweeder, J. (2007). Digital video in the classroom: Integrating theory and practice. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 7, (2), 107-128.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Tyner, Kathleen. (2010, Nov).10 Great ways to use digital video cameras in the classroom. Technology & Learning, 31 (4), 38-40.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Yerric, R., Thompson, M., McLaughlin, S., & MacDonald, S. (2011). Collected from the cuttingroom floor: An examination of teacher education approaches to digital video editing as a tool for shifting classroom practices. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 11, (1), 118-148.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Young, C. A., Long, S., & Myers, J. (2010). Editorial: Enhancing english language arts education with digital video. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education//,// 10 (1), 7-19.

Reviewed By: (Ben Hutchison, Courtney Cox)