Can Streaming Video Be The Superhero Of The 2020-21 School Year?
This year, teachers and students across the country are faced with new challenges both in and out of the classroom. School safety aside, the biggest obstacle for teachers is creating a positive learning environment that is engaging to students no matter their classroom.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers are being required to adjust their lessons, teaching style and technique – whether they’re teaching in-person, online, or a combination of both.
They aren’t able to stand in front of the class and move around the room due to social distance guidelines. They are limited in teaching from the board if they are simultaneously teaching virtually, as they will lose the attention of the students at home. And teaching directly to those kids at home, it is a significant amount of time via computer screen and a massive challenge to keep the interest and focus of these kids, sometimes for up to 3-4+ hours at a time with minimal breaks in the schedule, throughout the day.
As districts continue planning and adjusting for the 2020-21 school year, the question remains: How can teachers develop enriching and educational lesson plans for both online and in-person students during the COVID-19 pandemic?
For many teachers, the answer is to combine first person instruction (physical or virtual) with a variety of video components. The use of both live and pre-recorded video is essential to this year’s classroom. Today, we will look at several reasons why your classroom, no matter how you’ll be teaching this year, can benefit by incorporating a streaming service into your lesson plan to engage and educate every student across subjects.
Why Use Streaming Video As A Consistent Part Of Lesson Plans?
Incorporating videos into lesson plans allows teachers to bring concepts to life, even if they are working in an environment where real-world examples aren’t always possible. Reading a classic novel in English class? Show the film adaptation to your students to help them further explore the story. Learning about The Civil Rights Movement in history class? Stream a relevant historical movie to get students to further explore these monumental events and issues. Teaching a foreign language? Test students’ comprehension with a corresponding foreign language film.
Using video to reinforce information taught increases the retention of academic lessons and concepts when used in support of teacher instruction. Video also is a good way for students to engage and develop empathy for a story or concept.
Streaming educational videos are available to cover endless topics, issues and concepts; they run the gamut on academic subjects in their application; and they are available in a variety of languages.
What Streaming Service Is Available For My Classroom?
The challenge is how to ensure easy and equal access of this supplemental video material to all students. Students will need to have these resources available to them no matter where, when and how they learn.
In order to create a digital learning environment for students this year, I suggest looking into Swank K-12 Streaming, a video streaming service that provides school districts and teachers with access to thousands of documentaries and feature films.
Swank subsets its movies into a variety of categories and themes, and solves many of the hurdles I have faced with other educational technology applications, such as:
- Seamless connection to a variety of Learning Management Systems
- Thousands of video titles to choose from
- Single sign-on integration
- Simple-to-use dashboard for classroom management
- No firewall issues
- No DVDs and players management
- Safe and legal content
- Centralized account management at either the school or district level
One of the biggest reasons why I love the library offered by Swank K-12 Streaming is because you no longer need to worry about carrying or organizing digital and physical media across multiple campuses. Every video has a simple link to click on to access content, giving you the ability to maximize the time you have with your students.
How To Sign Up For Swank K-12 Streaming
As we all search for the right path for the coming year, we are looking for tools and processes to make things positive and simple to follow for students, parents and our teachers. While 2020-21 will look like a very different school year and might shift and change in model over the months, no matter what, Swank K-12 Streaming is good for all learning models and will continue to service your school or district well now as well as in more traditional years to come.
To get your school district or classroom on board with Swank K-12 Streaming, visit this website and complete the brief inquiry form. Swank K-12 Streaming will reply with information regarding cost estimate and a topline overview of their service. You can also share Swank K-12 Streaming with your administrators by inviting them to browse through the thousands of titles in their K-12 Streaming library.
About the author, Jeffrey Bradbury
Jeff Bradbury, creator of TeacherCast, and father of the famous @EduTriplets Thanks for checking out TeacherCast today. Please take a moment to find me on all of my Social Media channels!