Using EmbedPlus - YouTube Videos as Educational Tools
Our core features could help teachers focus students on relevant parts of existing
videos and allow them to add extended material. See our initial ideas below:
Chapter/Scene Skipping
Videos often have specific segments or turning points that viewers may wish to jump
back and forth to, especially after the first view. A video could span multiple
topics and/or contain different speakers. Teachers can mark each turning point for
easy navigation using the jump buttons on the player. Alternatively, if a video
has certain 'skippable' parts that are not relevant to the desired lesson, the beginning
of the relevant parts could be marked for direct access to them.
Movable Zoom and Slow Motion
These are the other DVD-like controls. They can be particularly valuable for science
and nature videos in which students are to make observations. To illustrate, a video
might contain experiments and chemical reactions that may happen too quickly for
normal playback. Slow motion and zoom offers students a chance to get a closer and
clearer understanding of the event. They can also provide greater accessibility
that some students might need for viewing text and other objects within a video.
Third Party Annotations
Teachers might wish to offer additional information beyond what is presented in
a video. Such information could be effectively displayed using annotations that
popup at user-defined times. EmbedPlus offers such a feature for third-parties--i.e.
anyone that wishes to embed a video. While annotations/captions are also possible
through YouTube, they can only be added by a user with access to the video's channel.
EmbedPlus complements YouTube in this way. You will also find that with EmbedPlus'
annotations, the control bar of the player displays the text to avoid blocking the
video screen and possibly distracting viewers.
Real-time Reactions
This
optional feature displays Digg, Google+, Reddit, YouTube and Twitter reactions
right inside the player. We are speculating that some comments from these sites
can offer students useful viewpoints from others that have viewed a video, particularly
those outside the students' classroom. This of course depends on the nature of the
commenters and tweeters.
These are just our initial thoughts. We are also beginning to explore the use of
our player in enhancing popular types of web activities and applications. For example,
have you ever wondered
how to pronounce difficult English words? We're building a video-based pronunciation
tool. Try it out with some words below:
how to pronounce apple
how to pronounce genre
how to pronounce hello
how to pronounce live
how to pronounce miscellaneous
how to pronounce schedule
how to pronounce thought
