Is video the future of education?

Some of the most popular features of social media are the content sharing opportunities that exist on sites such as Flickr and YouTube. The ease with which we can publish and share pictures opens up a whole world of possibilities for the creative teacher. Videos in particular lend themselves exceptionally well to the learning environment, whether that is inside or outside the classroom.

Most schools have now eased up on the maximum security mentality that existed a few years ago and have allowed, at least the teaching staff, to access YouTube. YouTube clips can be used imaginatively in the classroom and are especially effective when used as an opener, to illustrate a complex point or to generate some ‘awe and wonder’. One of YouTube’s biggest drawbacks is its success. 48 hours of video are uploaded onto the website every minute – that’s 8 years of content every day. There is no moderation of quality and therefore searching a topic can result in thousands of videos which greatly vary in standard. Many videos are also not appropriate for the school environment or are not as closely linked to the school syllabus as a teacher may want. YouTube have reacted to this by creating Youtube Education with age and subject appropriate content.

While YouTube caters for a mass audience, other websites have emerged which are primarily aimed at the educational world. Clickview, an Australian company offer schools a library of high quality videos but there are costs involved depending on the type of package you subscribe to. The great majesty of social media is that so much of it is available free of charge and I wonder how many schools will be willing to pay for video libraries when free alternatives exist.

The emergence of free educational video sharing sites is incredibly exciting, especially when the people behind these ventures are working directly with teachers and educational experts to ensure that the content is desirable and the clips succinct and engaging. The Khan Academy, TED Ed, the educational branch of the inspiring TED talks and The Virtual School are all seeking to record real educators delivering real content that can be used in their own teaching as well as being shared with anyone else who can access the material around the world. The Virtual School in particular are motivated by the aim of giving teachers and students in the developing world access to some of the best teachers and ideas from the developed world.

At The John Warner School we are working with The Virtual School to help create some of these inspiring videos. I hope this will be fantastic professional development for the colleagues involved in the creation of video content, but I am also hopeful that the impact of sharing this content will be felt more widely than we could ever have imagined.