Many people may think that YouTube is only used for
entertainment purposes or for people to post funny videos on. However, that is
not the case. In an article that I recently read, a teacher used YouTube videos
in her classroom to enhance her lessons or to simply engage her students in the
lesson of the day. For example, she used a video on YouTube to introduce a
lesson on the Pythagorean Theorem, which helped her hook the students’
attention. She found that not all the videos she showed interested her
students. In fact, the student found some videos to be boring. In turn, she
took their complaints as an opportunity to challenge her students to create
their own video. The assignment was for the students to make their own video
illustrating the math they found boring from the YouTube video. She believed
this would allow the students to show their creativity and use technology in an
appropriate manner. As a result of this assignment she was able to assess her
students’ understanding of the topics they chose and determine what areas they
may have a weakness.
I never thought about using this form of technology in my
classroom. As a college student I have used YouTube videos to study for exams
when I was unfamiliar with the math topic or needed a further explanation.
However, I did not realize how many mathematical videos there are on YouTube
that can reinforce a lesson for students or help teachers engage their students
in the lesson. After reading this article I will definitely take this idea into
consideration for my future classroom. I think that this is a great way to get
students excited about math and have them express their creativity and
reasoning behind their concept of the topic. This is also a good way to
encourage group work and have students explore a different form of education.
The only concern i have about this idea is, how did the students make the video of math they found boring? Do they just rant? Or try to explain where they are getting stuck and do not understand the math? I feel if i were to do a video about math that i dont understand, i would be ranting for five minutes straight! But this is a cute idea, and i think it would make math a little more fun.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you! Many time I look up YouTube videos to help me in classes, which I need help with. Sometimes the videos have helped me understand more than the classes itself. YouTube has many useful videos, not only that help me, but there are also engaging, fun videos I have found for when I start teaching. These videos include songs and picture stories of math concepts. For example, I found a video with a song to remember how to use the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for any missing length in a right triangle. I wish that some of my teachers in the past had used some of these videos in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteAntonietta, I think that YouTube is definitely a GREAT tool to capture the students' attention which is extremely important! Without the full attention of your students' no matter how important and even interesting your lesson may be, it will go nowhere if the student's are not interested in it. I have had teachers in the past use YouTube as well to capture our attention. One example is in my high school math class we were gonna learn about the golden ratio, so before starting the lesson, our teacher showed us a YouTube video that talked all about what the golden ratio was. After the video was shown, people were much more interested about what it was, while already having some prior background knowledge about it as a result!
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