Are your students this engaged throughout class? If not, consider adding more images and videos to lessons.

When teachers are able to quickly and easily find content such as images and videos to enrich their lessons, they are more likely to use such content. There are many benefits to both teachers and students to making digital resources more easily accessible.

More Effective

Sixty percent of teachers say digital media help them be more effective. For these teachers, access to digital content such as audio, images and videos allows them to create a more in-depth and effective lesson.

Reach More Learners

Additionally, 76 percent of teachers say using video helps them respond to a variety of learning styles. Not all students learn the same way, some are visual, some audio and some are kinesthetic learners. Using video in combination with other strategies allows teachers to reach more students than lecturing alone.

Demonstrate Content

A majority of teachers (57 percent) say digital media enables them to demonstrate content they can’t show any other way. There are some things that just can’t be explained, they must be demonstrated. However, there are times, when it is not possible to personally demonstrate an idea, for this, digital media provides the perfect solution. Through images and videos, students can explore rainforests in Brazil, learn about chemical reactions too dangerous to try in class and see the effects of famine on countries in Africa. Each of these things would be difficult to understand without seeing them.

 Student Wishes

Adding digital content to lessons has an important impact on student achievement and learning. One in two students wants more digital content in their lessons. These students believe digital content helps them learn and remember the content covered in a lesson better than simply listening to the teacher explain it or reading from a book.

The easier it is for teachers to find visual content that aligns with their lessons, the more likely they are to incorporate the content. With MediaCAST, all your digital content is searchable from one, easy to use interface. Additionally, content can be added into presentation slides or an LMS course for easy accessibility during class.

What is your favorite way to incorporate images and videos into your lessons?

Do your students look like this when watching a video in class? Try using shorter clips to keep students engaged.

When showing a video in class, it is important to keep in mind the attention span of the audience. While students can easily sit through a three hour movie in theaters, the same cannot be said for watching videos in school.

Videos shown in class are meant to inform students rather than for purely entertainment purposes and often lack the exciting explosions and car chases that attract student attention for a longer period of time. As such, it is important to keep video clips shown in class a reasonable length.

The younger a child, the shorter his attention span will be. A basic rule of thumb is to double the student’s age to determine the maximum length a video clip should be. For example, a class of 7-year-olds can be expected to focus on a video for 14 minutes. However, this rule should be used as a guideline combined with experience.

In my experience, getting a group of students to focus on a video in class is not as simple as this. Instead of showing the video in one long segment, consider splitting it up into short segments with class discussions sprinkled in between. This allows everyone a break and allows those whose attention may have wandered or who have become overwhelmed by the content a chance to re-engage in class.

Using the Snag-A-Segment tool in MediaCAST allows teachers to easily create short segments from longer videos. Using this tool, video clips will automatically start and stop at the desired time, thus enabling you to keep student engagement at its maximum level throughout class.

Next time you plan to use a video in class, be sure to think about student attention span and if the video might work better split up into multiple segments throughout the lesson instead of one long clip at the end.

What is your favorite tip for using video in the classroom?

With the new Lecture Capture module, capturing lectures is easier than ever. No longer do you have to have a dedicated room for classes that will be recorded. Instead, any room on campus that is equipped with a computer and video camera can be used to capture lectures. However, with the increase of ease of recording lectures, the question moves from “What lectures should we capture?” to “Who owns captured lectures?”

Are lectures the intellectual property of the professor who gives them? Or are they work produced while employed by the university and thus owned by the university?

Who Owns Captured Lectures?

While there are many ways to answer this question, the best way to approach it with your faculty is to have a conversation with them about it. Allow professors to decide whether they want to use Lecture Capture to record their lessons or if they would prefer to not record them.

For schools that feel strongly about recording all lectures, it is possible to include a clause in instructor’s contracts that require them to allow their lectures to be recorded. If this approach is taken, it is important to clearly outline how the captured lectures will be used.

Be sure to discuss whether captured lectures will be available only to students enrolled in the course, or if they will be available on the internet for anyone to see. If your school offers MOOCs, will the lectures be used for this purpose?

Copyright Law

In determining how to use recorded lectures, it is important to consider copyright law surrounding any content used within the lecture. Images, videos and other materials used during a captured lecture are all subject to their individual copyrights.

If the captured lecture will only be available to students enrolled in the course, the materials should be protected under Fair Use, which allows use by teachers or students of a small portion of a work to illustrate a lesson. However, once the lecture is widely disseminated, the individual copyrights of works used within a lecture come into play.

To ensure only students enrolled in the course have access to a captured lecture, use your school’s LMS to allow access. The settings on each student’s LMS account can be used to verify their enrollment in the course.

Capturing Guest Speakers

For guest speakers, the same general rules apply. If the captured lecture will only be made available to students currently enrolled in the course in which the speaker presents to, using the recording should not be an issue. However, it is always good policy to have the guest speaker sign a release form. If they don’t sign the form, don’t record them – especially if the presentation is given to a large audience or you are planning to use the presentation on your school website.

As with all things, when first introduced, there will be many questions surrounding Lecture Capture and the proper approach to using captured lectures but over time, with the proper communication and training, these concerns should diminish.

What policies do you have in place regarding captured lectures?

Using mobile devices such as iPads, Android tablets, laptops and smartphones in school is becoming increasingly popular. And with good reason – adding mobile devices to your classroom is a great way to encourage students to take control of their learning. With these devices in their hands, they are now empowered to look up information that interests them or furthers their understanding of a topic. However, it is also important to ensure students have access to the resources that will give them the basic knowledge they need in order to develop an interest. Thus, the importance of mobile learning content management.

Once digital tools are available, paper handouts will seem passé, especially because students tend to lose or misplace important papers. Instead, use digital handouts to ensure students always have the information they need on hand.

Students are much more likely to bring their mobile device with them wherever they go than they are to bring their textbook or homework. With digital resources, students do not have to distinguish between the two. Instead, they can bring their school work with them wherever they go and effectively use downtime throughout the day.

However, distributing the necessary content to student devices can be a tedious task without the proper tools. Most mobile devices are not designed to be part of a network, and thus lack the ability to easily communicate directly with other devices. At this point, choices are limited, you can either sync each device individually – a time consuming task that is not ideal for BYOD programs – or email resources to students – only a good idea if all students have a school provided email address.

Neither of these options is ideal and requires some major sacrifices. The first option requires a lot of time, the second does not allow students to access the resources without internet access and neither option allows teachers to automatically retrieve the resources at the end of the school year or class period – a critical ability when it comes to items with limited licenses such as etextbooks or video resources.

For an option that accomplishes all this and more, try the MediaCAST Mobile Learning Content Manager for iPad and Android. The Mobile Learning Content Manager allows teachers to distribute content to groups of student devices at once and set automatic expiration dates to ensure the resource is returned once students no longer need it. It also ensures students are able to access the content anytime, anywhere, even without internet access.

Ensure your mobile learning program is a success by considering the importance of mobile learning content management.