Make your own videos!

Much of the discussion and many of the questions about flipping the classroom revolve around the use of video to transmit information to students.  There has been much discussion about Khan academy and the like as tools for this transmission of information.  While KA and other sites are phenomenal and are often used by students as review/learning tools, this author believes that for any classroom teacher to get the most out of flipping their class, every teacher should make their own videos.  Here are some reasons for that:

1. Making your own videos enables you to deliver the exact content you feel your students need.  Many other postings are maybe too detailed for your class or emphasize points that are not that important to learning what is needed at the time.

2. Making your own videos is a great personal learning tool for the teacher. There is external pressure to say the right things because this becomes a public process.  Therefore you ensure that you have the information correct before you publish it.

3. Making your own videos gives you ownership of your instruction.  I have tried using other's material for teaching in the past: powerpoints, worksheets, etc.  and I never have felt comfortable as a teacher doing it this way.  A student WANTS to know their teacher and if the teacher is using someone else's voice to deliver material, the class becomes much less personal and more distant.  This also becomes a way to connect with parents who hear and see what their children are doing in class and can hear you teach when they could not before.


4. Making your own videos allows your voice to be heard locally.  I use local examples that would not apply to someone in Germany or even Kalamazoo. One of the failings of a textbook is that they have to use very general examples that could apply anywhere.  I can use examples of the landfill just outside of town, the cheese factory, the river, Lake Michigan, etc.  


5. Making your own videos is an easy way to sell the idea to parents because the perception that flipping is a lazy way out goes away when they realize that you have taken the time to put all of this together and you aren't just doing a quick internet search and using someone else's hard work.


Now, in our school, we have 3 teachers that teach 9th grade biology.  I don't think it is necessary in that case for all of us to make videos on the same subjects.  In fact, it is pretty cool when my students listen to a lecture made by another teacher in our school because they are getting variety of style, ideas, humor, etc.  but in a LOCAL flavor.  They are hearing someone they see in the hall and their friends have as a teacher.  That is far different than hearing someone you will likely never meet or see.


Comments/Ideas for and against are welcome!