Choosing Audio, Video and Visual Resources for Your School
By: Dr. Annette Lamb
You've probably heard that an image is worth a thousand words, but what about an audio or a video? For many learners, audio and video can bring information alive by providing an element of authenticity. Users are able to see and hear a particular frog in a specific pond, not a generic, static description in written words. Oral descriptions can help the auditory learner gain descriptive information, while the movement of video can help a student understand the context of the descriptions.
Children and young adults come to school with different sets of expectations and experiences. They also come with varied learning styles. While some will be motivated by a video, others will be drawn into an audiobook or music activity. The key is to provide a variety of learning experiences to meet individual differences. This type of dynamic learning environment is known as a differentiated classroom.
Librarians, media specialists, technology coordinators and other teachers all play a vital role in selecting and organizing technology-rich resources as well as designing the learning environment.
Developmental Levels of Students
As you select audio and video materials to integrate into the classroom, consider the developmental level of your students. For example, young children do not differentiate between real and make-believe. This has implications for the kinds of video materials you select and the activities you design.
Develop concrete activities for primary children. For example, ask students to sequence screens from a movie, draw a storyboard of a video, or use Kidspiration to review the elements of an audiobook. Ask students to map the setting of the video. As students gain experience using audio and video, ask them to discuss the nature of the characters and make predications in the story.
Intermediate students like video storylines with conflict and clear morals. Use fairytales and fantasy to expand their thinking about the world. Incorporate music through the use of musicals and music videos.
As students become teenagers, they enjoy movies about young adults their age. Look for videos with real-life circumstances and world issues. Music becomes increasingly important to many students. This is a great age to examine the lyrics in popular or historical songs.
Audio and Video Ideas
If you're new to the use of audio and video materials, start with traditional activities and adapt them for a media-rich environment. Let's use writing as an example.
Journal Writing
Rather than a traditional journal, keep a media journal detailing what music is heard and television is watched.
Review Writing
Rather than the traditional book review, try a media review. Watch a movie, listen to an audio recording, or view a television program. Then write a critical review.
Directions Writing
Rather than reading and writing directions, watch a video containing step-by-step instructions for a procedure. Then, write your own instructions for your own video production. Students still get experience writing, but they do it in a different way.
Descriptive Writing
Watch a video and write about the setting of the story like you were writing for a travel book.
Short Story Writing
Write short stories based on the characters in a movie or music video.
Poetry
Watch oral history videos or music videos. Write a poem that reflects the person's experience in the video.
In addition to adapting your traditional activities, consider new ways of thinking about content.
Role of Music
Listen to music that relates to a particular time period. Discuss how it reflects the time.
Radio News
Rather than just reading the local newspaper, listen to a live radio broadcast or television program from somewhere else in the world. Compare it to local news.
Audiobook
Rather than reading a novel or textbook, listen to an audiobook to gather content.
Think Different
Music can be a great way to incorporate audio into the classroom. Rather than focusing on a particular genre of music, think about the value of the music content. In other words, what is the music saying in terms of sounds and lyrics? How could it help you address a particular learning outcome?
Strengths and Limitations of Video Technology
Due to its ease-of-use, affordability, and reliability, video use has become one of the most often-used technologies in the library and classroom. Its fundamental strength is to convey motion sequences. It can bring remote experiences from all over the world and beyond back into the learning environment.
Students can visit other countries and study the culture of other peoples. Through reenactments and dramatizations, viewers can be mentally transported into different times and different worlds. The medium can also be used to display fictional events and scenarios that can be used to help learners explore their feelings and attitudes about situations.
Video can be used to spark students to pose solutions to practical and theoretical problems. Through motion, television can display any number of processes, showing the learner exactly how something is done. Learners can be shown a specific skill by an expert. It can give them a close-up, first-hand view, and show them important details as in a microscopic view of cell-life or a surgical procedure. Views from extreme distances can also be shown, such as when a telescopic lens is used to show distant views of another planetary object.
The technology can alter the time frame of events. It can be used to analyze the movements in a tumbler's somersault by slowing things down (slow motion), or speed events up (time-lapse) in order to watch a butterfly emerge from its cocoon. Animation can be incorporated, altering both time and space, to simulate movement or give movement to inanimate objects. Video can provide a safe observation distance by physically relocating the learner away from potential danger. The viewer can observe an explosive chemistry procedure or travel inside a tornado.
Along with the many strengths of video, there are also a few limitations. For many video distribution systems, the viewer has little useful control over how the material is viewed other than changing the sound level or turning it off. Video and television programming can lead to misinterpretations, either intentional or unintentional. Inaccurate documentary presentations can be taken as absolute. Brief clips can be edited and placed within sequences to give inaccurate representations.
At the classroom level, although some schools have computers and television receivers or some other type of display equipment in every classroom, many teachers have to go through the logistics of scheduling and moving equipment into their classrooms or moving their students to another location for viewing.
The equipment necessary for the reception and recording of video is available at a relatively low price; however, the cost of producing quality programming can also be a limiting factor. Moreover when schools do invest in the needed equipment to do professional production, they are often unable to commit enough people, time and other resources for the effective design and development of quality programming.
Dr. Annette Lamb has been a school library media specialist, computer teacher and professor of education and library science.
Product Roundup
Louvre from MacroSystem
MacroSystem Digital Video, the inventor of stand-alone video editors, has announced the delivery of a new product for digital cameras. The Louvre is an appliance that imports digital stills for editing, viewing and exporting to either CD, DVD or out to a printer. With this new technology, students and teachers are now able to share high-quality JPEGs in full resolution with an entire class, directly on a data projector, without the need of a computer. And the Louvre comes standard with useful classroom features such as photo compare, transitions/effects and music import from a CD. Built on the hallmark of digital video editors, from the top-of-the-line Solitaire to the introductory Claro, the Louvre remains a unique product in the market because of its low learning curve and high stability.
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Audio-Technica UniPoint from Full Compass
With more than 30 new hanging, gooseneck, boundary and handheld models, Audio-Technica's new UniPoint line of miniature condenser installed-sound microphones offers an innovation for every acoustical challenge. UniPoint boundary microphones are recognized for outstanding speech intelligibility and transparent sound quality. New interchangeable elements deliver outstanding sonic quality. Design innovations offer unsurpassed immunity from radio frequency interference. The UniPoint line is available from Full Compass.
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RDY2GO
VFI (Video Furniture International) has introduced RDY2GO, the all-in-one presentation solution to suit all of your usual applications for both large and small room scenarios. This unit comes with wheels for easy mobility. It comes standard with customized 19-inch mobile rack, LCD projector, adjustable projector mount, amplifier/mixer, microphone, three black, flush-mounted speakers (front and sides) VHS/DVD player, vented panels, TV cable outlet, power cords and surge protectors and security screws. All of the furniture is made from durable, furniture-grade laminate or scratch-resistant, powder-coated paint.
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