Language, Camera, Action! Motivating Young Learners with Video (by David Dodgson)

Back in the sepia-tinged days of 2010 when I was still very much finding my way around blogs and Twitter, I was virtually introduced to Barbara and she kindly offered me the chance to do a guest post here on Teaching Village about how I used PowerPoint in class. 18 months on, we again get the chance to collaborate as part of the EVO 2012 Digital Storytelling for Young Learners team along with some other fantastic educators, namely Shelly Terrell, Özge Karaoğlu, Esra Girgin, Jennifer Verschoor, Michelle Worgan, and Sabrina De Vita (full details are included at the end of this post).

As part of our EVO event, I will co-moderate a session about Video Stories with Young Learners with Özge. As a prelude to that,  am delighted to have the chance to return to Teaching Village to share some of the ideas I’ve used in class, often with little more than a video-recording device and some editing software – and creative young students of course!

And what better way to share some ideas about using video than by recording a video! Please watch on:

Video in the Language Classroom 1 – How, why and what for?

And here are a couple of examples (used with permission of course!) of videos we have made in class (note: these were made as follow-up projects reviewing a story we had just finished reading entitled Alien Alert in Seattle just in case you are wondering what’s going on!)

The Strange Show!

OK, so I did a bit of editing on this one BUT all of the inout came from the students! They said what they wanted the video to look like and asked if I could slow some parts down and add in some extra visual effects. 🙂

Life on Mitrax

This is a wonderfully creative poster about the alien planet (mentioned but not seen, meaning the students invented all the details themselves!) from the story. Rather than just being part of a (largely unseen) wall display the corridor, this presentation now has pride of place on the class wiki page.

You can see more of my students’ Alien Alert video projects by clicking here.

Another great way to use video on a school or class website is by making Talking Head videos:

Video in the Classroom 2 – Talking Heads

And we should not forget that many of the recording devices we have allow us to go beyond the classroom walls both virtually and literally:

Video in the Language Classroom 3 – Going Mobile

Thank you for indulging me and my video mayhem – I hope you got some useful ideas and I would love to hear how you have used video in class via the comments section.

EVO 2012 – Digital Storytelling for Young Learners

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I will soon have the honour of co-moderating an EVO session along with a fantastic group of teachers and educators. Our 5-week session on Digital Storytelling for Young Learners runs from January 9th to February 12th 2012. As well as looking at Video Stories, we will also cover Comic Strip Generators, Collaborative Online Stories and Mobile Storytelling and a whole host of other ways you can really engage your learners and exploit their creativity through stories.

Registration is open from January 1st and will be done through our Yahoo Group. You can also find out more information about our syllabus on our pbworks page. Hope to see you there!

Note: This article by Dave Dodgson originally appeared on Teaching Village, and is licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution-Non Commercial, No Derivatives 3.0 License. If you wish to share it you must re-publish it “as is”, and retain any credits, acknowledgements, and hyperlinks within it.

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6 Responses

  1. Barbara says:

    I love your storytelling ideas, Dave! I’m thrilled to be working with you on the digital storytelling for young learners session with you and everyone else, and already excited about learning new ideas for using video during your week!

  2. DavidD says:

    Hi Barbara,

    Thanks once again for letting me share my ideas here. I’m really looking forward to the EVO sessions as well. It will be a great chance to share ideas and get some new ones.

    Dave

  3. Karolina D. says:

    Dear Dave,

    We’ve seen some very nice ideas!

    I liked the last one the best. It’s great to see them ACTING outside the classroom. That really is a true use of language!

    Keep up the great work!

    Greetings from Croatia,

    Karolina

  4. Cornelia says:

    I really loved this blog…It is so dyamic and it provides teaching with passion. Congratulation, Cornelia, a teacher from Romania

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