Swisher Article - Differences Between Videos and Still Images

What is the difference between video and still images in classroom instruction?

 

Now that I have had the opportunity to create both an instructional digital story and a digital video (which still contains many still images), I begin to see Swisher’s article and discussion on multimedia theory elements coming to life.  Now that school is out of session, I found that creating a full video was a little difficult without my resources readily available, but chose to use GoAnimate.com; a fun website that has been wildly popular with my students in video instruction.  I was able to splice in video from Go Animate with MovieMaker. 

I find that the video instruction has more of an impact on learning due to the entertainment factor; however, with both modes, I feel that the coherence principle is effective as Swisher states, it puts “focus on key elements and mentally organizes them in a way that makes sense”.  The videos are great ways of presenting the basic facts while the teacher then elaborates with hands-on activities and may delve further into the concepts to ensure each student is fully grasping the information.   The digital story focuses on the connection of graphics and narration, while a video puts the main focus on narration and delivery. I feel that one would be more appropriate then the other depending on the concept.  When teaching a song with movements, a video would make more sense.  Or perhaps demonstrating the proper technique for music, while a digital story makes more sense when working with the learning basic music theory. 

In order to avoid the redundancy principle, I found that limiting the animations and focusing on the pictures of notes was vital for the students’ ability to transfer the concept into long term memory.  Music is a visual language in itself and requires pictorial representations in order to understand.  I felt there would be too much interference if I shot a video of myself with a whiteboard or Velcro board of the staff and music notes.  I felt that students could possibly focus on other things, perhaps what I was wearing, verses focusing on the facts.  Perhaps this could fit in with the temporal contiguity principle as the need to focus on graphics and narrations work well in the music world.