When it comes to using video in class, Ben Goldstein is an expert. Not only is he co-author (with Paul Driver) of the Cambridge Handbook Language Learning with Digital Video, but he’s also one of the authors of our secondary courses, Eyes Open and Uncover, both of which use exciting video content from Discovery Education™.
In this webinar, Ben looked at the most popular online video genres of the moment, and analysed the influence they have on students’ own video projects. He showed practical examples of students’ work and looked at how the structure, organisation and language of these clips can be made accessible to learners, and how it helps inform their work.
It is important to consider what’s new with video – more specifically, how online video has blurred traditional divisions and created new genres. As well as traditional genres such as romance, comedy or biography, we now need to consider new genres such as video memes, bloopers, how to guides, mash-ups etc. As more and more of these new styles of videos appear on sites like YouTube, students want to copy and imitate them.
So how can we use these genres in the classroom? Offer your students the following genres and ask them to create a 2-3 minute video on a topic of their choice:
- Music
- Vlog
- Guided Tour
- Walkthrough
- How-to
In this case, let’s use how-to videos as an example. Ask your students to pick a topic, for example recipes, and remind them to keep the video to 2-3 minutes in length. This is to make sure their ideas are succinct and they don’t get overwhelmed.
Things to include in the video
When your students are creating the video, ask them to consider the following:
- Music
- Face-to-camera (how many people in the video?)
- Captions
- Credits
- Props used during filming.
Things to talk about in the video
For content, they could consider:
- Ingredients
- Instructions (first/then/next … imperatives)
- Other information: for instance, cultural information, personal tastes
- Introductory and Concluding phrases.
You can find examples of How-to videos on many sites out there, such as Howcast. Keeping up to date with the ever-changing video genres you’ll find online is a great way to help encourage learners to be creative and innovative. You can find more examples of online video genres on the special playlist Ben and Paul created for their Cambridge handbook Language Learning with Digital Video.
To view the full webinar, please click on the video below.
For more practical classroom tips and activities using video, take a look at Language Learning with Digital Video, part of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series, written by Ben and Paul Driver. This book is for teachers who are interested in using a range of video in the language classroom, from documentaries to YouTube clips and learner-generated material.
Click on the links to find out more about the secondary courses Eyes Open and Uncover which combine captivating video from Discovery Education™ with a unique approach from Cambridge University Press that opens a whole new way to view the world.