Review and Compare Online Educational Video Services
As many as 94% of teachers are doing it in the classroom, an increasing number of Home Educators are beginning to do it, and even the parents and caregivers of Special Needs students are now understanding why they need to do it.
Doing what?
Using online educational video as a powerful and potentially very beneficial teaching aid, that what!
There is no doubt that the audio visual nature of video and movies as an educational tool is extremely useful, after all it is a powerful form of Visual Learning. But choosing which educational video service to use can be like trying to compare apples with oranges.
A recent survey of the many websites now offering online video for educational purposes reveals the good, the bad, and the downright ugly side of what can only be described in most cases as a very misleading situation.
For a start if you are going to use video for teaching children a selection of curriculum topics, it is stating the obvious that you need to use educational video that was designed specfically for the purpose. Trying to use video content that was original designed for television programming and enterainment can hardly be described as being aligned to National or State Standards.
Then of course you have the issue of educational video that is not subtitled. This type of video, no matter how good the content, is essentially only doing 66% of the job. Children – whether they be Special Needs or not – need to have the choice to watch, listen to or read each presentation. It is this that caters for the widest range of Learning Styles and abilities. In fact in 2010 the Government passed laws requiring video providers to provide subtitles – otherwise known as closed captions. Yet because this is the Internet, many providers simply ignore these requirements which is testament to a very prevalent attitude that is if it’s video, and if it’s of a general educational nature, it’s good enough.
Then you have those websites that loudly proclaim to have the MOST videos – that’s right …more than anyone else – as if the education of our children was some type of race. Well that’s great, but the trouble is that not only is most of what they offer not developed to teach those K-12 curriculum subjects, there are so many videos that it is impossible to find and use anything without spending literally hours searching and sifting through what’s there.
Then there are the freebie video websites. Yes, the use of the videos are free, but like most things in life, you get exactly what you pay for. There is nothing else. There is no support of any kind. There are no instructions, User Guides or Lesson Plans. And there are certainly no additional tools or resources provided to help if the student doesn’t understand something .
So what’s the point of a child studying a topic without having the facility to check on what details they recall or remember afterwards. And that’s why any online educational video service worth it’s salt should provide the quiz facilities for each topic delivered on video. And do they? NO! The majority feel that just redirecting video that is often available on YouTube, is good enough. Shame on them! This is our children’s education we are talking about, and personally I believe there is little room for such sloppiness.
So this online educational video service survey took a look at more than 20 websites claiming to provide online educational video, and compared exactly what they offered. It then took the 4 best educational video service providers, and compared them item-by-item to identify what support services and resources were provided.
You can review the results of this survey using this link:
http://www.zaneeducation.com/online-education-comparison.php
I hope that you find this as useful as I did.
