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Video is a medium to present ideas and express emotions, making it very valuable in the educational experience.
The most recent generations, the Millennials and the Zs, seem to have been born with phones or tablets in hand. Their ability to assimilate and use technological tools is far superior to that of previous generations. This could be because young people and children pass in front of a screen, interacting with devices from an early age and using them also for recreational activities, thus reducing the learning curve to master these technologies of daily use.
The familiarity of children and young people using smartphones, tablets, computers, and social media has enormous potential to open educational pathways. Two Mexican teachers discovered how to teach their students to use their skills and hobbies to learn valuable lessons. We discuss this below and in more detail in our next webinar on January 26 with the theme “Video as an educational resource in the pandemic.” The teachers in charge of these projects will be the guests. The live transmission will be in Spanish..
From emotion to knowledge
Fernando Pantoja, a teacher on the Morelia Campus of Prepa Tec, leads classes for students’ social and emotional development. Among the subjects he teaches are Thinking Skills and Personal and Professional Decisions.
Searching for a tool that would allow him to teach students about managing emotions, he found TikTok, an online platform where users can upload and share videos. Pantoja asked his students to use this online tool and upload videos positively depicting and explaining specific emotions linked to their life experiences, dealing with managing emotions, and the ideal attitude for expressing them.
In designing the activity, Pantoja recognized the value of understanding why children and young people view social media as an essential part of their day-to-day lives. This optic at the time of teaching children and young people is crucial. If we do not understand where they spend most of their time or why they do it, it becomes challenging to find common ground and make the necessary connections to transmit knowledge and get the student to adopt it as theirs.
“This type of activity constantly requires looking for new ways for students to have fun learning, which helps us as teachers build a connection with them,” explained Pantoja, who has a master’s in Education focusing on Teaching-Learning Processes. He added that another of the most fundamental benefits is to show students that they are not the only ones who feel a certain way, creating physically within the classroom the human connections that social networks try to generate, but often falls short.
More than video –it is narrative
Asking students to produce video as a form of learning is seen as an attractive option. The previous section covered the positive results that the activity generates when it is well applied.
However, to achieve the teaching goals, it is imperative that the teacher considers why and for what he is requesting the video. The teacher must be very clear about how the specific type of video is produced and must communicate to the students clear and straightforward guidelines so that the situation is not lost or complicated by trying to do a project beyond the expectations and capabilities established for the class.
Such is the position of Salvador Plancarte, screenwriter and audiovisual content consultant. To Plancarte, making a video is not an educational experience in itself. The attribute of learning is more about sorting and expressing ideas coherently to put meaning in the execution of a project. “We are not talking about technical things, but rather, narratives, structures, and basic audiovisual language,” argues the creator and educator. As an educational program designer, his experience has enabled him to know what works in a video and how to use it efficiently as a teaching tool, which Plancarte explained, is not its most common purpose.
The master lecturer also commented that video is not yet systematized for teaching. Having a cell phone, social networks, or technological tool does not guarantee a natural or automatic use for learning or teaching. “A pencil doesn’t make you a writer; a musical instrument doesn’t make you a musician,” Plancarte gave as examples. He emphasizes the need to prepare teachers to use audiovisual production and technology-at-hand to accomplish real educational benefits.
If you want to know more about these teachers’ points of view and experiences, consult their Edu Bits: Using TikTok in the classroom to manage emotions and Audiovisual projects in the classroom. Or, if you also speak Spanish, tune in to the next webinar on January 26 at 4:00 p.m. (UTC), when Fernando Pantoja and Salvador Plancarte will talk more in-depth about using video and social media in the educational experience. Do not miss it!
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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