Should we have students do science reports with videos?

Being a science teacher, one of the best parts of the course was observing, critiquing, and discussing the video report made of a respiration experiment in the face-to-face session on 10 October. This part of the course clearly emphasized how important it is to teach have students ( and ourselves) use the right digital tool for the purpose intended. In this video, students basically presented a lab report on an investigation they had conducted as a group. I then included images of the equipment, graph, and set up and moving pictures of students on treadmills and LoggerPro data being processed by a computer. Having not thought of video reporting like this before, it made me question the ways in which this would be preferred. I concluded this means of reporting would be worse for a number of reasons:

1) All the video technology, while cute and stimulating, could equally have been equally clearly communicated in still images. The motion of a person on a treadmill and the motion of a series of dots filling in on a graph are slow means of showing unimportant (and unnecessary) ideas.

2) The energy that went into the technology of the investigation was distracting from the valuable learning that students could have had by doing the investigation. A focus on what the control variables are and how they could be controlled would have been valuable.

3) The video product could have been done equally by all four students, but I doubt students with less digital literacy were the ones doing the final ‘writing’ or editing. Having students turn in individual reports engages students more in the product.

4) The teacher needs to spend more time assessing student work when much of it includes video of needless action. With the technologies we use today, the teacher would probably prepare a paper or computer-linked Word document to use as a rubric. Modifying or commenting directly on the students’ video would require much more teacher time and require students to use even more time to look through the video for the comments.

5) Video technology is usually not yet indexed like paper products are. To assess a video product, the teacher would need to repeatedly go back and forward on the video to link the variables, equipment, procedure, results, and evaluations. On a paper product this is quick and seamless.

6) The students needed two class periods to prepare the report after two class periods performing the investigation. The entire investigation could be completed in one session and reported on as homework.

7) Students needed specialized computer programs to do the video reporting. This restriction removes from the immediacy of the learning and reflecting.
A comment was made that students needed to be brave to put themselves out there with the mistakes they had made. In science, the hypotheses that are not supported and the mistakes and wrong assumptions are part of the process. Finding that the investigation does not support one’s believes often leads to further and deeper understanding of the process being investigated. It is not brave to state these, it is essential.