The Next Tech Thing: YouTube

Grade five students working on clay animal sculptures.

Christin Congdon, one of our art teachers at Minnewashta Elementary School, regularly uses video for her daily instruction in a unique way I haven’t seen often. For the past two years, she has been recording a video that instructs her kindergarten through fifth grade students on the lesson steps and process of the art technique which they are learning. Lessons are on everything from painting techniques to clay, to rosemaling, drawing and weaving. She shows these instructional videos during class, so it is a modified flipped learning technique.

First grade students working on weaving.

Since she has multiple sections of the same grade and therefore teaches the same lesson four to six times per week, she started doing this as a way to not have to repeat herself multiple times. She likes the fact that through video, each student has the ability to clearly see the steps and process on the screen rather than trying to crowd around her and get a spot to watch. By using video, she only has to use up art supplies once rather than using more up on demonstrations for every single class, which can get expensive.
Christin has a dedicated art classroom now but was on a cart moving from classroom to classroom in prior years. During that time, she found the use of video instruction efficient because it increased the amount of instructional time for her students--they watched the video as she set up supplies and distributed materials. By far the biggest benefit Christin told me about is the fact of increased time for her to work with individual students. Now with a dedicated classroom, as the videos are playing, she is able to walk around the room and help students who are struggling, encourage students, and answer questions.

Just 12 of almost 200 videos on Christin's YouTube Channel

She often plays the video repeatedly during a class period, so students are able to continually look at the screen to be reminded of the steps and techniques rather than forget things or need to ask for things to be repeated. In addition, fifth grade students all have an iPad in our 1:1 program, so students bring those to class and have their own individual learning station which they can pause, rewind, and loop as they work. Recently I saw this first hand when I observed Christin’s classroom making clay animals as pictured above.

iPad stand

Christin has been putting her videos on YouTube and there are currently almost 200! She has over 250 subscribers to her channel and some of the videos have thousands of views. Her most watched video has been seen by over 33,000 people. These views are well beyond just the students in her classroom, as she has about 130 students per grade level. Her art instruction is reaching beyond her classroom walls around the world. To record the videos, she uses her iPad. Her husband made an adjustable iPad stand as pictured using PVC pipe, some glue, and a dado blade on a table saw.