Using Subtitles on Video offers Teachers in the Classroom a potential Treasure Trove of Opportunity.
Sadly many believe that when Subtitles (otherwise known as Captions) are provided on educational video for use in the classroom, that they only benefit the deaf, and those with hearing impairments. Yet this could not be further from the truth.
In an educational environment, particularly the school classroom, the use of subtitles provides a range of benefits for children and students of all ages and ability, and certainly not just those with special education needs.
And the faster teachers and schools are made aware of those benefits, the sooner those benefits can be made available and passed on to their students.
Described by the K-12 educational video provider and Visual Learning company Zane Education as “The Missing Piece”, the use of video subtitles provides the following benefits – a number of which provide some very significant solutions:
- Students are provided with the opportunity to study a topic and improve their reading and literacy skills simultaneously. (What an opportunity this provides – and the research is there to evidence these possibilities.)
- Using video with subtitles provides each student with the choice to watch, listen to, or read each presentation, which means a teacher cam simultaneously provide for the widest range of Learning Styles without the need for additional or special resources.
- With the use of subtitles, teachers becomes able to provide the curriculum material for a variety of special needs students without the need for special resources, or necessarily needing to set aside time that might hold up the progress of other students in the class. (Imagine the possibility of being able to provide that all-important form of Visual Learning for those 1 in 8 Dyslexic students, that also offers the potential to improve their Reading and Literacy skills.)
- Each video can be used as a standalone reading improvement resource.
- That 20% of the school-aged population that are designated as being English as a Second Language Learners, can use each video to study the same range of curriculum content as their English-speaking peers, while using the subtitles to improve their English Language skills.
- And how about the potential to enable students to improve their retention of the material being studied, by requiring them to use the video a second time with the sound turned off – reading the subtitles aloud. Surely this process would also serve to improve their reading and literacy skills at the same time.
- And yes – the use of the subtitles provides the only solution for hearing impaired and deaf students.
Zane Education then also takes the use of subtitles to the next level by including and inserting within those subtitles, highlighted words that are important to the learning of that topic. They then provide interactive study tools beside the video screen that enable the student to pause the video and use those tools to investigate the meaning of those words.
With such a range of possibilities being accessible simply through choosing the appropriate video to use in the Classroom, surely we as teachers cannot afford to ignore such an opportunity, particularly when the use of video enables the average student to study at their own speed, and a provides a medium that captures and maintains their interest for significantly longer periods of time than the textbook.
Zane Education has been quietly working away at make the use of such facilities available for all teachers for the last 4 years. In view of the potential that such advances offer, teachers, parents and schools can hardly ignore such an opportunity.
This may be proof once again that the simplest use of technology can open so many doors that have been overlooked in the past.
Teachers seeking more information about the use of online curriculum-based educational with subtitles provided by Zane Education as part of their Visual Learning solution should read this page.
View Zane Educations’s free Educational Video of the Day to see how they use subtitles to provide the benefits discussed in this article.
[…] An estimated 80% of teachers use video in classrooms, but less than 10% see the real benefits simply because the subtitles are not activated. The benefits of integrating reading and literacy in one session are defined here: Read: Benefits of Subtitles in Online Educational Video […]