Using Tech to Create Connections, Part Two—Connecting Student and Content

I used to be of the opinion that I was a little more of a serious thinker than many people because I read Atlantic Monthly, a serious, old-school magazine with page after page of block text. No pictures ever. Nope, no pictures for this guy because things like pictures, photos, images, diagrams, or charts—those were for lesser minds.

Unfortunately, I’d bought into what I now understand as an elitist way of thinking: if you needed pictures to help you understand what you’ve read and remember it, you had no place at the table of scholarly, serious thinkers and you should stick with People and Sports Illustrated instead.

Boy, was I a knucklehead! Now when a paper appears in front of me with page after page of block text, it’s THAT paper I tend to take less seriously. I ask questions like “Do they really expect readers to retain anything that they’ve read from 32 pages of block text?” and, “What could we do to make this information more accessible, memorable, or sticky?”

People have been using visuals to communicate as long as . . . well, just about as long as they’ve been communicating. Jesus himself often used a visual to get his message across to the eyes and ears of his hearers. He had Thomas take a long look at the nail-marked hands and side, throwing in an invitation to touch those wounds as well. A shriveled-up fig tree attested to the power of faith in an unforgettable way. He liked using coins—a coin with the emperor’s image, a coin plucked from a fish’s mouth, or a coin plunked into the temple’s money box—as visual support for his spoken words.

Jesus understood what modern-day researchers refer to as the picture superiority effect. It’s the idea that people are likely to remember much more when they are presented with words and images combined as opposed to words alone.

The Master Teacher effectively used visuals as tools to connect his students to his lesson content. Turns out, he was using classroom technology long before there were screens and Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Today, modern classroom technology gives us the ability to communicate the gospel with visuals and words in ways like never before. So how can we use the tech tools available to us today to better connect our students to God’s eternal, life-giving content?

  • Considering using video to connect students to content

Using video to deliver content allows us to engage the learner with both words and carefully selected, impactful visuals. In the age of YouTube tutorials, video is a natural learning medium for people of all ages.

At first, I thought that using video to deliver content in place of in-class lecture was redundant. The teacher is standing right there, the students are listening (kind of), why not just . . . say it live? There are definitely times to say it live—chiefly, when we are reacting, correcting, supplementing, and synthesizing learning activities. But there are good reasons for letting recorded video replace some of our in-class lecture time, the lecture we would typically do in introducing and expanding on our topic. By way of context, my catechism students watch videos in class on their devices with headphones on.

The first benefit is efficiency. With a prerecorded video, the teacher can do all the talking. By working off a script (no tangents or wasted words), I can cover 15 minutes of material in a 5-minute video. That frees up valuable time in class to use on learning activities based on the video’s content. A very simple example would be: “Now that you’ve watched the video, write down or discuss one thing you learned, two passages that support it, and three questions you think might appear on a test.”

Another benefit of using video to deliver content is personalized learning. When I lecture in front of the class, students’ attentions might drift momentarily, or they might jot down a note and miss important material while their attention is diverted. When I deliver content via video, students are able to pause, rewind, and rewatch as often as they wish. And when it comes time to review for a test, they have all those lecture videos at their disposal to refresh their memories.

A final benefit to using video is the ability to share remotely. If students miss class, they only need to watch the video and do the accompanying learning activities to help them get caught up. Videos and the asynchronous learning that accompanies them are also a foundational piece of the remote learning puzzle.

One can use video in a blended learning scenario without flipping the classroom necessarily. But if you did want to flip your classroom and use your in-class time solely for active learning, videos assigned for at-home viewing the night before would be a key component.

Video production does take some time, but it might be easier than you think. PowerPoint, for example, allows users to record audio and attach it to a given slide—then you can render your work as an .mp4 video file.

If you wanted to go one step further, Screencast-O-Matic and Screencastify are low-cost screen recorders that allow a person to record audio that expounds upon the onscreen visuals. Again the final step is rendering the video as an .mp4 file and sharing the link with your students via Google Drive, for example.

There are many different methods available for producing short videos that effectively and efficiently deliver your content. The key is to use the video, not just for the sake of novelty, but as a springboard for more engaging class discussions and learning activities.

The Master Teacher understood the importance of using visuals to connect his “students” to the eternal, life-giving content he shared with them. We have different technology available to us today, but by God’s grace, we are privileged to share the same content Jesus did!

Next month, Lord willing, we’ll look at another way to use visuals to connect students to content—and to personalize learning—with an educational website called Edpuzzle.

Edtech tools mentioned in this article: PowerPoint, Screencast-O-Matic, Screencastify


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