It can be difficult to keep children engaged as a teacher. Whether it’s a large classroom setting or tutoring one-on-one, their minds doze off, and when the subject matter isn’t the most interesting topic, things get even trickier. Video learning and utilization of educational videos is a simple solution to help break up the monotony and keep kids engaged. Below we’ll cover the benefits and drawbacks of working in educational videos as a part of your learning plan.
The Benefits of Utilizing Educational Videos
Several benefits exist from the use of educational videos in classroom learning. Regardless of the grade level you teach, how old your students are, or what subject you teach, it’s important to break things up to keep students engaged. The primary benefits of incorporating videos, along with traditional textbook learning include
- It’s a great visual tool to back up what’s in a textbook
- Your students can see what they’re reading, giving more context to what they’re learning
- If it is extremely difficult or a topic that’s not very interesting, videos will create more engagement in the classroom than a textbook
- Your students don’t have to read as much
- You can’t completely cut out homework and textbook reading, but if you cut back on the amount of reading they have to do, they’re more likely to follow through with the reading assignments you ask them to complete
- It’s great for reinforcement
- Again, with certain subjects, topics are going to fly right over the students’ heads; educational videos helps connect the dots
- Videos give context to the words that are difficult to understand
- It’s fun
- Teaching/learning doesn’t have to be, nor should it be boring; by including video into your lesson plans, your students are going to engage more frequently in the classroom
- It’s a good way to demonstrate something hard to put into words. If concepts are difficult to grasp, sometimes a video is the best way to convey the message or the subject that you’re trying to convey to your students
Drawbacks of Incorporating Educational Videos
As you can see, there are several benefits that you’ll realize by including videos into your lesson plan as a teacher. Not only to make the subject matter more interesting, but also to keep your students engaged, and ensure they’re paying attention in the classroom. We do, however, have to cover some of the drawbacks of using educational videos in the classroom. Some possible drawbacks include
- It’s time-consuming to set up
- Setting up projectors, video equipment in the classroom, and making sure you find the right educational videos, takes additional time
- With a textbook you just say what page to flip to, with videos, you’ll need more time to get everything ready for the class
- Your classroom might be technologically limited (this can be lack of video equipment, lack of storage, or other limitations in certain schools)
- If the videos aren’t fun/engaging, your students might not pay attention. Some educational videos are just as dull as textbooks, so you have to make sure you’re using the right ones if you want to keep your students engaged
- There’s editing you have to do
- If you’re creating the videos, you have to record and edit them, and this takes plenty of time to get to the right format for your classroom
- There might be some issues with clarification of topics
- If you teach one thing, and there’s a contradiction or different opinion in the videos you’re showing, this can cause some confusion for students who are watching the videos and listening to your classroom instruction
- Videos might also contradict what’s in the text, so students are getting three different messages, on a specific topic, and this can confuse certain learners
Conclusion
It’s a good idea to use video instruction in the normal course of teaching students. Yes, it can detract from your specific instructional purpose in some instances, but overall, it’s a great way to help kids develop and keep them engaged when teaching difficult topics. It’s especially beneficial when kids are visual learners and need to see what’s being instructed, versus just flipping through pages in a textbook. Although you don’t have to use it every day in the classroom, utilizing educational videos as a part of your lesson plan is highly beneficial for teachers to incorporate when scheduling their lesson plans for the day.