Hello everybody,
Thanks again to everyone who sent me a link to a free science video that might be
suitable for use in schools. I'm slowly working through a huge list of such videos and
blogging about them at http://alomshaha.com/blog/ - I'd be grateful if you would share
your own thoughts on these videos in the comments section.
As I've said before, there's a lot of stuff out there, but despite hours of trawling through
the web and having heard back from others who have tried to do the same thing, I have
come to the conclusion that there is a real need for more content to be created and for it
to be made easier to find.
Whilst there's some great stuff on youtube, only the most recent stuff is of a half-decent
viewing quality - new stuff looks better simply because youtube have made changes to
the way their site works and you can now upload and view films in near-TV quality.
If you are someone who is going to make such a video in the near future, I'd like to make
a few suggestions:
1) Wherever else you put your film, please also put it on youtube as it's the easiest place
to find videos. (Yes, most schools block youtube, but there are ways of getting round that
without too much effort). It's still the no.1 video site.
2) Please make the films easy to share - for example by allowing them to be embedded
on other websites. It's a real shame to make a beautiful film that exists only on your
pretty, shiny website if no-one else knows about it. It should be more important to get
the films out to audiences than to get hits on your particular website, especially if you are
funded by public money. And you can always use the youtube figures in your evaluation.
Youtube is also a great place to get people discussing your films, so use it as a discussion
forum as well.
3) Please talk to a teacher or two to help you think about how your film might be used in
class - this is likely to be far more useful than looking through a national curriculum
document and far more likely to provide a realistic idea of whether your film will actually
be useful to teachers. I have refereed a couple of grant applications recently where
applicants have stated "this film will be used by teachers", but they have put forward
little evidence in support of this, beyond some vague statement about a link to the
national curriculum.
4) Please think about the length of your films - unless your films are really subject
specific and cover lots of stuff that needs to be taught in class, it's unlikely your epic
eight-part series about bioethics will be used by teachers. I'll happily use anything from a
few seconds to 15 minutes but I'd need a really good reason to use anything much longer.
5) Get someone who knows what they're doing to make the films. Seriously, owning a
video camera and a laptop with a dodgy copy of final-cut are not sufficient to make you a
film-maker.
Apologies to anyone who finds the above patronising, but I hope it will be useful to at
least a few of you out there.
Alom Shaha
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