ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter
Date: March 2004

Topic: "What ever happened to video in the classroom?"

Peter Viney

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Ten years ago, many people believed that video would be a basic everyday (even every lesson) part of classroom teaching by now. So what happened?

I started using video with open reel tape in the 1970s, so this is not cutting edge technology. I've co-written thirteen video courses in the last twenty years. During those twenty years I've told audiences that in the near future, video would be such a normal, everyday part of English teaching that we wouldn't imagine teaching without it. Well, the future's here, and where's video?

“Most teachers recognize the value of exposing their students to a wider world of English than just the teacher's face, voice and desire to be centre-stage.”

Why should video be an essential tool? The audio CD or tape is a specialist tool, and is actually a bit silly. How many people spend time listening to talk radio discussions and dramas (apart from course book authors)? The realistic uses of audio are for telephone work, songs, self-access audio "drilling" exercises, specialist listening exercises and specialist pronunciation work. It's a dumb medium for presenting situations, showing discussions, or imparting factual information. Even that old listening for specific information chestnut, the airport announcement, has largely been rendered redundant because computer screens have replaced audio announcements. We get a student struggling in a foreign language, so what do we do? By using audio as the major and preferred source of pre-recorded input, we blindfold him or her, and restrict their information flow to ears only.

Let's ignore the extreme Luddite teacher ("Teaching aids? Bunkum! Give me a pointed stick and a flat piece of sand, that's all the visual aids you'll ever need. Chalk and blackboards? Luxury!"). There are people who still in 2004 view the humble cassette-player as the march of merciless machines into the human world of language teaching. There are still some who say, "Cassettes? Never use them. They get much more of a laugh out of me acting it all out." However, most teachers recognize the value of exposing their students to a wider world of English than just the teacher's face, voice and desire to be centre-stage. There is no doubt in my mind that this wider world should embrace visuals as well as sound.

Almost any work is enhanced by video. A short list:

• Presentational material, fiction or factual
• Factual information
• Cultural background
• Dramatic acting out
• Pronunciation work with close ups on faces
• Communication skills (with emphasis on non-verbal communication)
• Picture-only material for presentation or discussion
• Songs with visuals / mouth movements
• News and current affairs (preferably recorded within the last 24 hours)
• Sports material – great if you take the soundtrack off a race and get students to predict and bet on the result
• Longer material for extensive viewing
• Unstructured real material for extensive viewing
• Film versions of literature
• Camera work filming students doing pair work, role plays, monologues, discussion
• Student-made films and projects
• Teacher-training, with the focus on performing micro skills like eye contact, question technique, gesture

Some of it you get from publishers. Some of it you record off air. Some of it is authentic DVDs or video. Some of it you film in class. Some your students film.

You can now find video material to fit every taste or method. So why aren't more teachers using video on a daily basis? Is it the hassle of lugging a trolley to the classroom? Is it having to pre-book-equipment? Is it having to rely on technicians? None of this should be true nowadays. Are schools too mean to invest in the hardware and software? I admit that video is a problem for a teacher travelling around between companies or private students, but already you could get around that with a laptop and a DVD.

The pre-requisite is a TV screen and a readily-accessible video or DVD player in every classroom. (See technical note below). I'll never do it, but if ever I opened a language school, there would be video in every room. I'd use it in 50% or more of lessons. Sometimes it would be a whole lesson. Most often it would be a ten minute phase. In a perfect world, with lots of money, I'd have a fixed digital camera that could be used at any time to record a role-play or other activity. This does not need state-of-the-art hardware either. Unless you're an accomplished camera operator, a fixed camera is the best option, the wide shot being far less disconcerting than amateur camera work.

Years ago, we were working on material (Grapevine) where every fifth lesson could be replaced by a parallel video lesson. At the time, I said "Next time we do a major course, there'll be one or two-minute videos for every lesson". That would have been ideal, as video wouldn't take over a lesson, but be a segment. We haven't done it because purely and simply there isn't the market to make it viable.

So, why isn't video the universal classroom tool now? Is it the awkwardness of using it? Are schools too mean to invest? Is it price? Companies think nothing of upgrading computer software yearly. I have boxes of old versions of Word and Photoshop. I just paid nearly £100 ($190) to upgrade Macintosh System 10.2 to system 10.3. But as soon as video is mentioned, they say "I can buy Pirates of the Carribbean for $20. Why should I pay $200 for a video course?" The answer is that one sells in hundreds or if very successful indeed, thousands. The other sells in millions and has already recouped all its production costs on theatrical release. Teachers might complain about the high cost of ELT video, but most ELT videos are lucky to break even on their production costs. Videos are largely seen as "loss leaders" by some publishers (not mine, I hasten to add) designed to support main courses rather than as projects in their own right. And some publishers have been selling off very cheaply made (or bought-in) videos at unrealistic prices, thus undermining the price of quality videos, and also putting people off video by palming teachers off with poor quality material.

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Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter

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