Five Reasons Why Video Should Matter to Your School

I’ve been working with schools helping them integrate new technologies to enhance the student experience for the last five years – most recently at Panopto. This has given me a chance to see at first-hand how schools are starting to rethink the classroom using video technology. With video already outpacing all other forms of web traffic according to leading IT firms, it is set to become one of the dominant forms of communication and engagement in the coming years. With this in mind I wanted to share my views on the top reasons schools need to investigate this medium. So why should video matter to you?

1. Using video can help raise student attainment.

Studies are increasingly showing that the ability to watch classroom content back via video recordings can play a key role in helping students to consolidate their learning and revise for exams. With Panopto’s powerful in-video search feature, students don’t have to watch a whole lesson back, but can focus on any parts of a lesson they found particularly tricky. This enables students to absorb material at their own pace. They can even add their own notes and bookmarks to recordings, making it easy to get to relevant content during exam revision season! This has a knock-on effect on attainment, with some teachers seeing improvements in results of up to 30%.

2. Video offers a fresh way to deliver engaging feedback to students.

One area that is often picked up on in Ofsted reports as needing improvement is the feedback teachers are offering their students. As an alternative to giving a student their work back marked in red pen, a number of education institutions are starting to use video to give students more engaging insights into their performance on essays and assignments. Teachers that are using recordings in this way have commented that they tend to give more nuanced feedback and it allows them to connect with their students in a new way.

3. Video opens up new opportunities to innovate teaching and learning.

Many teachers want to ‘flip’ the classroom – giving students core lesson content in advance, so they can come to class prepared for a more in-depth look at the topic being studied. Many of our users are creating short video recordings to do just this; sending out the recording to students to watch at home and freeing up class time for deeper discussion. Our powerful analytics allow the teacher to make sure that students are really watching this content to ensure that they come to class fully prepared.

4. Videos allows staff to share best practice.

Recording classroom content isn’t just great for students – it’s great for staff too as they can watch their lessons back to hone their teaching approach and share best practice examples with their peers.

5. Video can help you connect beyond the classroom.

With the ability to share video content to select groups of users, or make videos public to a mass audience, your school can connect with parents, other education institutions or prospective students like never before. Rather than relying on them reading a brochure or news bulletin, you can actually see who has viewed your video content. This can help link your school more closely to all of its stakeholders.