Web Video and Education
Web Video Education Valuable for Filling Instructional Voids
Web video education is the latest addition to Academia’s ever-evolving array of instructional ammunition. Its instant data delivery and impressive graphics capabilities have irrevocably altered the learning landscape. Given today’s general high-tech ambience, this comes as no surprise.
According to a major 2010 consumer survey, 178 million American internet users had viewed at least one web video during the prior month. This colossal sum constituted a whopping 83.5 percent of all US web surfers. The average video length of 4.4 minutes was relatively short. It was, however, double that of previous years.
The current high-tech educational craze began a decade ago. In April 2001, then-president of prestigious Massachusetts Institute for Technology Charles M. Vest announced the free availability of his institution’s course materials online.
Five years later, UC-Berkeley unveiled plans to install entire academic courses on iTunesU. That online educational platform has since evolved into one of the world’s largest prerecorded classroom lecture repositories. The following year, UC-Berkley on YouTube was launched. Since its inception, more than 120 million video downloads have been conducted via the site’s video-sharing component.
Soon after, both Stanford and Yale Universities followed suit. Three years ago, Harvard also hopped aboard the web video education bandwagon.
Web video education allows one to learn foreign languages or receive in-depth metaphysical instruction with a single keystroke at any desired time or location. Likewise, instructors may deliver lectures without lengthy physical travel.
Web video education has greatly leveled the instructional playing field for would-be students worldwide. Viewers may replay confusing course content, skip to specific lecture spots, and pause or analyze any vague areas at their leisure. Following are a few common applications for web video education:
Video Content Companion
Interactive web video is valuable for presenting interrelated educational content or re-presenting the same content in ways that are impossible via linear programs. An example would be a poetic license website.
Virtual Classes, Tutorials, Workshops, or Lessons
These interactive web video platforms are designed for formal educational delivery commonly featured in professional development seminars and conventional classrooms.
Digital library
Digital libraries are digital media databases wherein pupils may easily locate specific subject matter via topic and subtopic menus or keyword searches.
Animated Narratives
These graphical formats convey information in progressive or user-defined individualized tracks. This highly adaptable web video education format may be employed for telling stories or detailed visual explanations of various phenomena.
E-Colleges
Almost any degree or program available at traditional schools may now be earned entirely online. Web video education has enabled the administration of exams and delivery of videotaped lectures entirely online.
E-books
Lengthy academic research projects and full-length novels or nonfiction material are all available via online digital storage media. Periodic updates, additions, and changes to substantive content are accomplished much more easily and quickly than with traditional paper-paged tomes.
Interactive training manuals and tutorials
Government organizations and large corporations use web video education for personnel training and skills assessment. Self-paced study and individualized reviews can now be conducted with unparalleled efficiency. Knowledge retention is much more efficient via virtual video instruction.
Games
Web video education formats like typing tutors and grammar or arithmetic-based gaming themes make grasping fundamentals much more fun.
Technology’s cutting edge is a double-edged blade
Many have posed the question of whether new educational technologies are really disguised learning detractors. Are we overdoing the blinking lights in lieu of books and basic instruction? How can we utilize high-tech learning innovation without falling into pitfalls, yet still reap maximum rewards?
Teachers must become ever smarter and stronger to utilize web video education and similar cutting edge technology without tripping on the sharp ends. Educators cannot afford to become stranded on today’s Information Superhighway. Nonetheless, education’s long-held noble ideals and high purposes must always remain the primary focus and top priority for all its practitioners.
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