Saturday, February 7, 2015

The Benefits of Students Teaching Students Through Online Video

Schwartz, Katrina. (2014). The benefits of students teaching students through online video. MindShift. Retreived from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/11/the-benefits-of-students-teaching-students-through-online-video/.


I really enjoyed this article.  Since our last course, I have been on the fence about making videos and Screencasts.  I love the idea but time is always a factor.  I see this vision of creating a math video for each lesson.  I like the Flipped Classroom model.  I don’t think, at this point, it works for every subject consistently.  However, I do see math as a subject that this can be used daily/nightly.  How am I going to make a video for each lesson?  Over the summer I guess.  But then I saw this article and it strengthened my feelings towards this idea.  

The article begins with a story of a high school student and her struggles with chemistry.  She realized that she was able to understand the content better from her classmates and friends rather than extra studying and resources online.  Once she understood the concept, she decided that she would make a video of her new knowledge and share it with chemistry students in a lower level. The reason students learn better from each other is because it applies to their lives.  It is relevant and meaningful.  She says there is a passion in their voices of having just recently learned how to solve/understand the material themselves.  There is an excitement in their delivery.  She says the best people to explain a problem are the people that actually faced them.

This idea extended past the high school level, and a middle school found it to be a powerful tool as well.  A website called Mathtrain is a collection of how-to videos created by mostly students on math concepts.  I am very interested in checking this out and perhaps bookmarking a few for my students (and parents) to view.  The creation of videos led to hard work but hard work that was warranted by the students and their desire to publish quality resources online.

My concern before about not having time to create all these videos was slightly alleviated when I read that the middle school teacher was offering extra credit for creating math concept videos.  I would love to have students create in class but again, time is a factor.  Some could be produced but would their be time for all of them?  Assigning it as extra credit is motivating and not dependent on time.  Definitely something to think about.  The bank of math videos will grow over the year and even years to come.  

The article talks about the growing need for videos like this.  Common Core has changed the way we think and students and parents alike struggle with this type of thinking.  Imagine the benefits of student-created videos.  

This article wasn’t really anything new.  Students teaching students has always been a good strategy but it just put into light for me how useful and engaging this style of learning can be.