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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