Creation+of+Videos+for+Teaching

Creation of Videos for Teaching While it is clear that most teachers have little time for creation of such elaborate videos, a few great videos can compliment any unit or topic of study and may be used year after year in a variety of contexts. Further, it behooves us as teachers to invest in learning new technologies as well as techniques so that we can share these with are students and motivate them to try their hand at creating their own masterpieces. After all, if an "old person" who isn't supposed to be able to use technology can do something like this, so can they! Sometimes a model is worth a million explanations! Below is a video I created with //Windows Moviemaker//. I had a theme I wanted to research, food, and a concept that I wanted to teach, cultural awareness. It was clear to me that our worldview is frequently Eurocentric and that while students are often taught language (ie food vocabulary) and are give a //taste// of Latino culture (most frequently in the form of a taco, tortilla española, empanada, or some other easily prepared delicacy), they are rarely taught the impact that native American cultures had on Europeans. Most foods we think of as coming from the old world, were actually introduced to Europeans after 1492. Native American foods such as the tomato, potato, and corn were much more prolific than European crops and were easily cultivated in Europe. In fact, the introduction of crops cultivated by indigenous American peoples, played a significant role in increasing European lifespan, stabilizing and doubling their populations, and vastly improving their economies. Today, most historians agree that the introduction of these crops had a much greater impact on Europe than all the gold, silver,and riches brought to Europe by the //Conquistadores//. This type of video creates a great opportunity for students to engage in higher order thinking skills because after viewing such a video, they may be asked to contrast and compare what Europeans introduced to the Americans, how these types of contacts and exchanges impacted each culture and so on. I believe that the tacos, empanadas or tortillas are extremely valuable, too, because we learn to appreciate other cultures through our senses, but limiting the teaching of culture to a few food artifacts does not do enough to teach us about what Native Americans contributed to other cultures.

Further, as mentioned below, a video such as this could be a starting point for further investigation on the part of the students, as it was in my case. One day while subing, a African-american girl asked "Why should I study Spanish?!!! What does it have to do with black people?!!!" After doing this project I asked myself, what types of food Africans had brought to the Americas and researched that. I was surprise to find little available information, but sure that many students, not only of color, would motivated them to learn about the impact of Africans on the Caribbean where 50% of the population (or more in some regions) is of African decent. By providing them with a few resources and teaching students a few basic about programs such as //Moviemaker//, students could easily create a similar video about African food (or other) contributions to Latin American cultures! Such projects open the door to a myriad of learning opportunities to teach across the curriculum and meet students age-appropriate intellectual needs, while teaching basic language skills

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 * El Viaje de la Comida** (Food's Trip) by Valerie Rollwagen

This short video chronicles the initial contact between Europeans and indigenous American peoples focusing on how this contact changed and enriched European diets; at the same time, it introduce new vocabulary terms in Spanish. Designed to be used with guided notes that provide an opportunity to reinforce emerging food related vocabulary, it teaches cultural awareness by revealing how Native American contributions to European agriculture and diet played a significant role in the expansion of the European economy and stabilizing its population. Students' language needs are met by developing food related vocabulary in Spanish; similarly, their age-appropriate intellectual needs are met through the use of video to teach about cultural exchange.