Online Videos

I love using videos in my classroom! On of my ideals as a teacher is that students should be learning things in the classroom that they can relate to every day life and their own experience. Videos appeal to visual and auditory learners. They bring the content alive. In my field of history, I find that it is particularly important to bring events of the past to life in the classroom. I hope that YouTube will not be blocked in the school I am working in, because it is one of my favourite tools for finding online videos. Here are a few examples that I would use in my classroom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_YBplucfuk&feature=fvst Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have a Dream" Speech. This would be very helpful in a study of social justice, human rights, and the movements of the sixties. Instead of reading his speech, the students actually get to hear and see him speak. He was an amazing speaker, and the atmosphere that you can see at the rally around him is fascinating. Plus, its only seventeen minutes and would be excellent to begin a class or unit to get the student's minds activated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXIe5GbLSUs&skipcontrinter=1  Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Germany. I have actually used this video in a grade 8 classroom for our Holocaust unit. I had a lot of boys in that classroom that were very into sports, so I thought another way to get my students thinking about the consequences of the Holocaust and Hitler's way of thinking was to show them how much influence he had over the people of Germany. Owens was a black track star at the olympics that year. Hitler made a speech at the opening ceremonies declaring that the games would show the superiority of the Aryan race over every other race, including black people. The video explains the propaganda of the games, and Owens triumph despite adversity. I love this story because it shows the resilience of humans. I love sports and I believe that a person's true character is shown when they are competing in athletics. The video is a great tool for bringing a human side to the Holocaust, and giving some hope to students because it is a very heavy unit!