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EdTech Magazine
With Online Video, Teachers Get Creative to Connect with Students
Educators can use a wider platform to inspire learning inside and outside their school districts.
By Advait Shinde
YouTube has long been the home of pop music videos and keyboarding
cats. But the pandemic has created a new class of potential viral stars
waiting in the wings, ready to explain organic chemistry or decode
algebra.
Justin Bieber probably isn’t too worried. But online video lessons are
growing exponentially as K–12 student learning goes online, and there
is no doubt that a few teachers will rise to the top to help more
students learn. That’s a rapid divergence from how education has
evolved in the past.
Change has traditionally come slowly and deliberately in the K–12
education world. When new concepts or technologies have been
introduced, they’re typically embraced by a small fraction of early
adopters. Then, over the course of several years, the best ideas are
generally accepted by a majority of teachers and administrators. Only
then do national education leaders typically follow suit.
For example, the concept of asynchronous learning — the idea that
students can learn the same material at different times or locations —
began in the late 1800s with correspondence courses but grew in
prominence with the dawn of home computing in the 1980s. Only after
technologies like smartphone videos and instant messaging became simple
and easy to use did asynchronous learning become more mainstream.
E-Learning Essentials
How the Pandemic Pushed Video Instruction Forward
This pandemic now has the education world moving forward at a breakneck
pace, building the education technology bike as we ride it. More than 1
billion students globally — along with their parents, teachers and
administrators — have been forced into a completely online world.
This has created immense challenges for the education system that don’t
have easy answers: Not all students have online devices. High-speed
internet access isn’t yet available in all homes. And parents of
children with disabilities face even greater challenges in providing
their kids with the education resources they need.
But for all the roadblocks and failures our education system is
experiencing from being whiplashed into an online world, an undeniable
success story is occurring alongside it. Teachers and administrators
are embracing change and finding ingenious ways to connect with
students online in a meaningful way. Hundreds of thousands of teachers
have realized over the past two months how much easier it has become to
create, upload and share videos online. They’ve been forced into video
instruction by the pandemic, but many are finding the medium to their
liking. They may never go back, and education will improve as a result.
Teachers May Be the Next YouTube Stars
In Washington, D.C., high school chemistry teacher Jonte Lee is
recording experiments from his kitchen, using his refrigerator as a
whiteboard. With a smartphone and his new Instagram account, he’s able
to ask and answer students’ questions in real time.
“Life has changed,” Lee tells WJLA. “But the love I have for my students has not changed.”
There are countless other examples of teachers going above and beyond
right now to stay connected with their students. And it’s not just the
tech-savvy teachers who are successfully implementing these online
solutions. Lee admits he’s only just started using Instagram since the
pandemic began.
“I do not know how to use social media at all,” he says.
Recording classroom lessons isn’t a new concept; it’s been possible for
decades, and easily accessible since the advent of YouTube. But now,
the marketplace of teachers providing their instruction online has
grown exponentially, bringing the flipped classroom concept to school
districts across the country.
Some of these teachers are for the first time becoming known beyond
their classrooms, gaining significant viewership online and generating
what no doubt will be a regular audience. These teachers were already
beloved by their students as fantastic and engaging educators. Now,
they have an opportunity to use a wider platform to inspire learning
outside their school districts. So much for slow and deliberate change.
Teachers desperately want to be back in their classrooms with their
students, but some of them are embracing the online format too. Maybe
America’s next YouTube star could be a teacher after all. What a
welcome change that would be.
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