Using video to “reinvent education”.

Posted by Tim O'Riordan on Thursday 10 March 2011 at 4:25pm
Tags: e-learning | video |

TEDTalks recently gave the stage to Salman Khan to talk about how video is used in the development of the Khan Academy's online assessment programme.

Khan's use of video in education has struck a chord as evidenced by a large number of YouTube hits and comments - and the receipt of a Microsoft Education Award in 2009. Bill Gates and Salman Khan on the TEDtalks stage. ©2011 TEDtalks In his talk, "Let's use video to reinvent education", he highlights the features of his approach to video pedagogy, an approach that closely accords with Chickering and Gamson's Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. He has found that the videos provide a means for learners to review content in their own time, relieves some of the pressure of class learning, and improves learner-teacher interaction in class.

At the end of the presentation Bill Gates joins Khan on stage and concludes: "I think you've just got a glimpse at the future of education".

How can you make a 'Khan screencast' style video? The Khan Academy website supplies some information on hardware and software:

"I use Camtasia Recorder ($200) + SmoothDraw3(Free) + a Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80) on a PC. I used to use ScreenVideoRecorder($20) and Microsoft Paint (Free)."

The process itself is reasonably straightforward. During a recent JISC Digital Media online demonstration, Dr Adrian Barnes from the University of Bristol provided an example of a physics presentation using PowerPoint, created with Camtasia software and a large tablet and pen.

If you want to find out more, we're running a "screencasting" workshop next week and also provide background advice documents which will help get you started (see links below).

If are using or supporting the use of video in your institution we would love to know 'why' and 'how' you are going about this.