AT this year’s virtual Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) (21st – 23rd September) teachers will be focusing on understanding the power of video-based learning, which is proven to stimulate the imagination, enhance involvement with text, and improve mental imagery.
After a year when lock-down proved the benefits of videos content in the classroom, two of the core seminars at this years’ SLF will be offering ideas and advice to teachers on optimising the power of video-based learning. Both are free to watch on-demand during the virtual Scottish Learning festival and for a month after.
On Wednesday 22 September (10:00 – 10:45) the SLF seminar programme will be hosting a session entitled “The Power of Educational Videos.”
The Edinburgh City Council team will be giving advice and recommendations from an authority, school and practitioner perspective, on integrating video content into the learning environment. A panel session during the seminar will be debating highly effective ways of implementing video content into student development through wider curriculum areas including DYW, PSE and Health and Wellbeing. The panel includes Joanna Maclean, Scottish educator, researcher and learning designer, William Brown, West OS development officer and digital learning officer at Inverclyde Council, David McKee, quality improvement Education officer for digital learning at City of Edinburgh Council, Simon Luxford-Moore, head of eLearning at ESMS and Kevan Scade, learning resources technologist at Ayrshire College.
Simon Luxford-Moore said, “The benefits of visualisation are not new. Like many learners, Albert Einstein said, “if I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it,” and Aristotle added that “it is impossible even to think without a mental picture.
“This has never been more true than during lock-down.
“We are increasingly recognising that short, curriculum aligned videos stimulate the students’ imagination, enhance involvement with the text, and improve mental imagery. It delivers learning in a format that matches today’s students preferred way of consuming information.”
A second webinar at the SLF is a part of the event’s “Fringe On Demand” series and will be delivered by highly respected historian and content expert, Carmel Bones whose 30-minute session will offer teachers advice on “Captivating your classroom with Video.” The webinar will provide practical pedagogical examples of how teachers can captivate their students with Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) aligned video content.
Carmel is a member of the Historical Association’s national secondary committee and a consulting editor for many leading resource providers. She recently wrote the new BBC Bitesize material and leads workshops at the annual Historical Association and Schools History Project Conferences. As an inspirational educationalist Carmel works with teachers across Scotland to achieve short term gains as well as long-term results. Inspiring departments and individuals to move forward with their thinking, she works with primary, secondary and post 16 teachers.
