Ed Tech Showcase

I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Ed Tech Professional Workshop at Brock University. Alongside my fellow colleague, Laurence, we presented on the new interactive video learning tool, Zaption. Showing videos is common place in Canadian classrooms. Following an in class video, teachers will often disseminate work-sheets for students to record responses to the video content. This method of practice is becoming outdated and obsolete as a result of recent technological innovations in education, including Zaption. Zaption helps turn passive viewing into an active learning experience. Teachers may use the web application to upload videos from YouTube, Vimeo, PBS, National Geographic, or private libraries. Multiple choice, open response and checkmark responses can automatically be added into the video in any particular spot. The video will automatically pause as the question appears on the screen. Students may then submit their response. Teachers may also trim the video down to size. 

The overarching goal of the presentation was to discuss how to incorporate Zaption into the 21st century classroom and its potential benefits. It has become clear that just watching a video is not an effective means of learning. However, teachers would still like to play videos showing science experiments or learning about another country and its topography. Zaption will help produce more meaningful and deeper learning experiences with video. Teachers may use Zaption for video quizzes as well as building video learning tours! Creating video lessons that are more engaging is not the sole benefit of this platform. Zaption also helps fill the gap in the split classroom. We can use different videos and form different questions for each student to respond to; allowing a unique way to differentiate within the classroom. In addition, Zaption provides a forum for the flipped classroom. Students may view videos and answer questions at home, leaving more time to discuss in the classroom. Teachers may track student responses and viewing habits using the Zaption analytics. With a heavy reliance on videos in education, Zaption helps to turn viewing from a passive activity into an active experience. 

The workshop introduced this information as well as how to create a unique Zaption viewing experience. There was a positive response from the attendees. The audience was pleased to learn of the innovative ways to effectively incoporate movies into the classroom learning experience, namely, that questions can be added to the video and teachers will have access to student answers in analytics. Teachers main concern included how to assess the students when using Zaption. I believe several teachers could relate to viewing a video as a passive experience and were pleased to discover how beneficial Zaption can be (especially in the split classroom).

Displayed below are pictures from the special day!