Technology and Learning Colleagues,
A new Technology Tips for Teachers blog article, Taking Notes on Videos, may be of interest. It features a free app, VideoNot.es that has been designed to make it easy to take digital notes on videos one is watching. Although this could be especially useful to teachers who use a flipped classroom model where students watch an instructional video -- and could take notes on it -- before class, it is also a novel way to teach good note-taking skills that are useful for other kinds of instruction or presentation contexts.
If you are a teacher and you try out this app with your students, please let us know what you think about it.
If you are a program technology coordinator, perhaps some of your teachers would be interested in trying this.
VideoNot.es might be interesting for English language teachers to try as an listening assessment or practice tool, asking students to write about what they understand an English speaker in a video to be saying.
If you are a professional developer, and include digital tools and resources in your professional development for teachers, this might be of interest.
Although I wrote the blog article, as I am not currently teaching, I did not have an opportunity to test out this app with adult learners, so I am especially interested to know what teachers who try it think of it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
David J. Rosen
Moderator, Technology and Learning CoP
djrosen123@gmail.com
Comments
David, thank you for sharing this cool tool. I can remember many times when I knew of a video that would help a student, but when I went to share the video with the student I was ill prepared to bring the student right to the "good parts" that were relevant at the time. VideoNot.es allows for me to mark any parts of the video with a bookmark of sorts and I can write in any notes I want at that bookmark. When I then go back to that video, all my notes are there and I can click on any one note to be brought to that bookmark in the video. So many ways this could be used!
I need to find more time to play with the possibilities and to get students trying this tool to get their feedback. In the meantime, if anyone has used this with students I would love to hear your experiences!
Hello Colleagues,
In a 2016 post in the LINCS Community's Integrating Technology group, and also in a World Education Ed Tech Center Tech Tips for Teachers blog article that year, I wrote about free software that would help adult learners to take notes about an instructional (or other) video. That software, Videonot.es, no longer exists, but there are at least two others that will help, in different ways, to accomplish the same purpose. Nikhil Sinha, once a user of Videonot.es, let me know that he has developed a free replacement, called LearnLeap There is also a similar free video note-taking application developed by University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development called VideoAnt.
Two advantages of LearnLeap are that:
1. All your notes for a given video can be taken on one page.
2. You can see (and copy) a text transcription of the video's audio in your notes page. If you wish, you can easily add your own notes in a different color, to distinguish them from the transcript, after any of the parts of the copied video transcript. For the one video I tried this with, Using Group Games to teach the Present Continuous Tense, an MLoTS videoclip of an authentic Vermont adult ESL class, with a voice-over by the teacher, Louis Giancola, explaining what he was trying to do in that class, the transcript of what he said was excellent, but was less so for the sections of the video where English language learners were speaking.
Using either of these software applications could, with practice, be an efficient way for some students to take notes on video lectures or presentations. Using either, because you can see a side-by-side of the video and the notes, should be an easy way to watch or review a video, and to watch again segments that were not well understood.
If you try one or both of these free apps, let us know what you think. I am not endorsing either, but do think each has potential value for some students. Note-taking is an important skill, one that some people do better than others. Taking notes on videos, perhaps beginning with a video on "How to Take Notes", would be a good way to learn and practice note-taking skills.
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS CoP Integrating Technology group
Colleagues,
I realized shortly afterwards that the web address for LearnLeap in my previous email was incorrect, and immediately corrected the web-based version of the post. However, for those who may only read the e-mailed version, I want to be sure you have the correct web address. LearnLeap
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS CoP Integrating Technology group
Hi Mr. Rosen,
After I read your post, I went to the LearnLeap website and signed in. As you have mentioned, your notes for a given video can be written on one page and the text transcript video's audio in your note page. That is a plus. I like the simple presentation. My students all have Gmail, so they can easily access it if they choose to use it.
The one I create can be shared easily on ZOOM. We all watch a short video segment and I write the notes I hear from the students on the same page without switching to another platform.....The creator has reached out to me and asked what I thought of the platform. I responded and wrote my feedback. They welcome more suggestions to improve the application....Thank you for sharing the link.
Best,
Margaret Ibasco
ESL instructor