This topic only barely concerns goats. What animal intelligence gleans in their ungulate eyes? Is it friendly, or… malevolent? If you’ve seen Robert Eggers’ The VVitch (2015), you know well the answer.
I will begin with the pros of video creation: firstly, I think kids will love it. They are so used to tuning into screens, and with a minimum of flash, I think you could really make a topic – language revitalization – very engaging for them, in a way that might not be possible on the old blackboard.
To make it engaging, I think that including a kahoot afterward will get them excited about the words, and the way that they might come up on a virtual quiz after. Kahoot is a pretty low-stakes way of getting a little competitive spirit in something that could otherwise be easily understood as boring learning material. As well, in a video, you can create natural pauses and places of emphasis that could later set up a mini-quiz question.
Alright so you don’t even need to rely on Kahoot, because with this H5P tool, you can build a quiz or prompts right into your video. I wrote that kahoot bit before but now that I’ve been into the future, I know that there are better alternatives.
For an edited video on language revitalization, one potential strategy I imagine would involve cutting between the way that the word is written, a recording of myself (or whoever is educating) talking about the word and its significance, and cutting to a clip or recording of the word being pronounced slowly and correctly by someone who is able to speak the language and can share that knowledge. You could do a recording of how to say a sentence, for example, and through the video break down the different component pieces and their significance. As well, you can do visual break-downs of the parts of the word, for those students who are etymologically inclined. Making a video is an opportunity to control the aspects of your lesson, wherein you can make it funny and visually attractive to kids, but I think that the fact it is appearing on a screen lends significance to it in their young screen-loving eyes.
A big con that comes up is the amount of time that you will invest in each video – but, hopefully as you continue to make videos, they will become faster and the process more streamlined. As well, imagine if you had a sub coming in one day of the week, and you had a video of yourself running a component of the lesson! Or, even mini-videos of you asking students politely to be respectful of the space. (ha)
Also if, as an educator, you are already tired of being on a screen, creating videos is gonna be draining. If that is the case, you should probably huck yer wearied bones outside. Behold a sunset or bird singing or somesuch, and feel strength and resolve returneth unto ye.
Then make the video. For the children!
