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25th
May 2012

Educational Videos for Teachers in the K-12 Classroom

Searching for Online Educational Video for Teachers to Use In the Classroom Can be a Drag

If you have found this page because you are a teacher looking for online video to use in class tomorrow, and don’t have the time to read and enjoy this article about the frustrations that many of your peers are experiencing with this same task, then go directly to this page to access the educational online video you need.

However if you have a few minutes, and are interested in reading about the frustration being suffered by a growing number of teachers like yourself, and the solution – then read on…..

Some people must expect teachers to be miracle workers.

And many of those people, or so it would appear,  can be found amongst the growing number of companies attempting to provide online video for teachers to use in the classroom.

Any as teacher that has ever sat down in the evening and attempted to find an online video that might be suitable for use in a class next day will tell you, it can be a hugely frustrating and time consuming task.

It is disappointing that – with more than 80% of teachers understanding the benefit of using online educational video as a valuable and effective classroom teaching resource – the majority of online educational video providers seem to lack any appreciation of what a teacher really needs.

Above all a teacher needs to be able to find and identify the appropriate online video to use in a matter of minutes, and that video really should be supported.  That support should provide immediate access to a relevant Lessons Plan, the online testing or quiz for that particular video topic, and in an ideal situation – the use of online interactive study tools that enable that topic to be fully explored by either the student or teacher. Yet the vast majority of online educational video services don’t even provide any level of Tech-support.
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22nd
May 2012

Study The First Americans Using Online Video

A Review of Studying The First Americans: The Paleo Indians Using Online Video.

Using these online subtitled videos you and your students will have the opportunity to study and learn about the PaleoIndians, or ‘first Indians,’ who populated the American continent about 11,500 years ago.

Zane Education’s library of online educational video includes a comprehensive range of History topics, and today we review the topic of The First Americans: The PaleoIndians.

The PaleoIndians, or ‘first Indians,’ who populated the American continent about 11,500 years ago, is a curriculum-based topic intended for children and students of 6 to 11 years of age up, or Kindergarten up to Grades 5.
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6th
Apr 2012

Teaching With Subtitled Educational Video

Teaching and Providing Equal Access in the Classroom

With up to 94% of teachers now using educational videos in the classroom as a valued teaching resource, it is interesting to see that many teachers use online educational video that only benefits some of their students and not all.

Video produced and originally intended for television distribution, and video of conference presentations is not video that is going to be particularly effective for teaching K-12 curriculum subjects. Content used to effective deliver curriculum should be developed specifically for that purpose. But yet many teachers are attempting to use that type of video because that is all they believe is available.

But there is much more to it that this. If teaching with educational video is to be effective, it must provide access for all students in the classroom, and not just some.

The soundtrack must be specially prepared so as to be able to provide that content to the blind student or the child with visual impairments.

The video should now by Federal Law, include the use of subtitles, otherwise known as closed captions. This of course provides for the deaf student, or those children with hearing impairments.

Those subtitles should be provided using enlarged fonts that are easy to read, again for those students that have mild visual impairment.

And then there is the need to provide for different Learning styles. By providing video with both specially prepared sound tracks and subtitles positioned in a dedicated position at the bottom of the video, we provide each child with the choice of watching, listening to, or reading each presentation, and in doing so we are provide for the widest range of Learning Styles.
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29th
Mar 2012

Education for Dyslexia

 

Educating the Dyslexic Child – Do We Expect Too Much?

Here we are in the 21st Century using a system of Education, a system that was originally designed in the time of the Renaissance, and we are confronted with the challenge of Dyslexia.

That being the case, what do we attempt to do? Yes, we attempt to recreate the wheel.

While I do not want to over-simplify the situation, and I must certainly bow to the knowledge of the experts, to me it appears that we are demanding that those 1 in 8 children with Dyslexia learn another language before we provide them with The Gift of Education – and that is the Language of Text.

If a family decides to move to live in another country where another language is spoken, they expect and plan to be confronted by their children having to learn another language before they can effectively attend school – but surely not in our own country!

In many ways it is ridiculous as expecting a person to learn how to catch and prepare fish before they have a right to eat it.

Visual Learning opens the doors for a child with Dyslexia, and yet we want those with the severest cases of Dyslexia to be removed from school, and placed in special schools for Dyslexic students when the reality is that many, many of these students are extremely intelligent, and simply need to be given an alternative to the textbook.

And the story gets much worse because many of the parents, when they attempt to get those children into those special schools, either find there is no spare places available, or that the costs are prohibitive.

Delivering the curriculum content that the child is required, and often wants to learn and study, by means of audio visual delivery is such a straight forward solution for many of those kids. And the technology is now available to do just that – and it’s available online.

The use of subtitled online educational video developed specifically for the K to 12 curriculum, enables those students to absorb and process the same information being studied by their peers, by watching and listening to video. And the icing on the cake for those with milder forms of dyslexia can use the video subtitles – otherwise known as closed captions – to improve their reading and literacy skills.

For the vast majority of dyslexic students this is a very real and meaningful alternative solution to the use of textbooks, but the significant benefits of using this method, lies in the fact that they can see the words, hear how they are pronounced and from there start to learn more about correct sentence structures, the appropriate context in which to use word and much more.

While many companies are now introducing the use of online educational video, this is not enough, and only one company has taken this to the level where they have added the all-important subtitles in the appropriate manner, to content specifically developed to teach a wide range of topics as required by the K-12 curriculum.

Zane Education is a company that many teachers, schools, parents and dyslexic students themselves are now turning to because they provide a service that delivers this effective Visual Learning service online.
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7th
Jul 2011

Free Lesson Plans

Lesson Plans Now Provided Free by Zane Education

Online K12 education video provider Zane Education is in the process of adding a range of new educational tools and resources to complement and enhance the value of using their online curriculum-based educational video library. The latest addition is the introduction of free Lesson Plan guides for each of the 260 topics that are taught using their online videos.

The company made a decision to provide these Lesson Plan Guides for downloading at no cost, firstly to help reduce the cost of homeschooling, but also to enable homeschool parents and teachers in the classroom to spend more time doing what they do best – teaching and homeschool parenting. By providing these Lesson Plans to subscribers of their ondemand Visual Learning service, the company wants to enable teachers and homeschool parents to use the Lesson Plans as the framework to teach and explore each particular topic, then use the online K12 video as the means to deliver the facts in the same way that a text book would, thereby leaving them with more time to explore the other activities provided for in the Lesson Plan, and to actually interact with those children that require more help. (more…)


2nd
Aug 2010

Homeschool Lesson Plans

It was an interesting weekend here at Zane Education. I got involved in an online conversation with one of our Twitter followers that has led to an idea that we might be able to develop to improve the service we provide the Homeschool community that is so close to our hearts.

It had never really occurred to me before just how many homeschooling mums and dads out there might be preparing their own lesson plans out there. And if that is the case, I have to ask, “How many times would that lesson plan be used by that one family and then seldom used again?”

While many of those “lesson plans” might only consist of a few lines scribbled out on a piece of paper, I have to wonder if there might be others that are preparing a lesson plan that could be used by other homeschooling families. (more…)