Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
to share them within a knowledge community (Pea et al., 2004; Pea, Lindgren, &
Rosen, 2006). Each of these tools provides specific affordances designed to support
cognitive and socio-cognitive activities of people who use them to create new video
content. Having students edit videos as an authentic “visual design problem” with
the direct involvement of video tools puts students in the active role of designers
and
helps to foster the deep understanding of the topic. This active process also
helps them to develop what Carver, Lehrer, Connel, and Erickson (1992) called
organizational, representational, and presentational skills.
However, until today, creating scripts and storyboards, shooting and film-editing
(not to mention video annotation or hypervideo construction) have not yet been
considered key competencies in our educational systems, even though writing and
editing texts are skills which are supposed to be promoted by instructional means.
In short, with the exception of some basic experiences with home videos, YouTube,
or similar platforms, skills for creating and designing video footage are lacking.
In the research to be reported here, the potential educational value of constructive
video is investigated empirically by experimental studies in the laboratory and in
the field. In particular, the cognitive and technical conditions necessary for effective
video-supported collaboration and acquisition of (visual) literacy skills in student
groups are studied. The overarching questions we are trying to answer are: How can
digital video technologies be implemented in educational learning processes? How
can they be implemented broadly and without an overall amount of effort that would
render a widespread application very unlikely? This means, finally, that the curricu-
lar and classroom context must be taken into account when trying to practically pave
the way for realizing this way of learning as a part of “normal” classroom activities.
In the remainder of this chapter, we present research that tackles these questions.
First, we present two exemplary types of digital video tools with specific affordances
that might be used to guide students in collaboration, design, and learning. Then, we
will describe the concept of collaborative visual design as a theoretical framework
that informed the development of a constructivist task for secondary school edu-
cation. Finally, we will present our initial research on students' performance in a
collaborative visual design task in a classroom setting and offer our conclusions
from the results.
Tools and Tasks for Learning with Digital Video—an Integrated
Approach
Video Tools to Guide Collaboration
Specific video tools were developed for educational purposes but have so far
been minimally appropriated yet in K-12 education (Pea et al., 2006; Zahn et al.,
2005). Two of these tools will be presented in the following two sections: The
tools are designed to support group knowledge processes. They can enable col-
laborative analysis and collaborative design of visual communication, like editing,
