Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 46

+visual analogy is believed to be one of the most efficient tools for activation of prior
knowledge and retention of new content;
+ videos enable students to acquire transferable skills such as research skills,
collaborative skills, problem solving, IT skills and organizational skills (Allam, 2006);
+ videos provide an enhanced learning experience and increased motivation by generating
a greater amount of interest and enjoyment;
+ videos help students learn through questioning and looking at real-world problems,
developing their critical viewing skills;
+ a practical advantage is that students can access videos using not only PCs, but also
laptops, tablets or even smartphones.
On the other hand, mention must be made of the disadvantages implied by using
videos in class:
-videos might be a great communication tool, but one cannot rely on it alone in teaching;
-there is the danger of the students just sitting back and watching the screen;
-the teacher’s role shifts from that of instructor to facilitator and class management can
prove to be more challenging for the teacher;
-equipment failure will ruin the whole lesson.
4. Examples of videos and activities in the Culture and Civilization optional
class
Bilingual students in Romanian high schools study Culture and Civilization in
English, for one class per week as part of the syllabus. In an attempt to make these
classes more attractive without affecting their educational purpose, I have been using
technology in class for the past few years. Videos have proven a great choice since they
engage the students and make them learn in a relaxed atmosphere. Obviously, not just
any video can be and has been used, but careful attention has been paid to the selection
process, taking into consideration the fact that the effective videos to use in class have to
meet certain requirements, such as grabbing students’ attention and providing value to the
course content, showing real life examples or case studies, stimulating follow-up
discussions or providing multiple perspectives instead of a single, biased one. The
following are examples of activities during which videos are used in the Culture and
Civilization classes:
a. When teaching accents and varieties of the English language, I chose a fragment
from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, together with a video that illustrates Eliza
Doolittle’s first pronunciation lesson. The video is an extract from the famous
adaptation My Fair Lady (1964) and it captures students’ attention more efficiently
than the reading text alone. Questions that analyse the situation in the text and
video follow and a class discussion is conducted by the teacher to help students
understand literary works better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJr9SSJKkII
b. In the chapter dedicated to the history of the English language, students watch a
video presenting the most important stages in the development of the language and
have to make notes. After they watch, a timeline of the English language is
recreated with the whole class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s
c. One of the topics for discussion during this optional class is racism, equal rights,
non-discrimination. At this point a text presenting the case of Ruby Bridges, the first
African-American girl to attend an all-white school in the South (1960), is
accompanied by a video displaying different perspectives to her story. Students
read the text, watch the video and report the story from different points of view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8D4ldGY41s
d. In a lesson on Scotland and its history I used the Braveheart trailer as a starting
point for discussion and in order to get my students in the mood for discovering
Scottish history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj0I8xVTV18&t=20s. As for
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