Advocates of the use of technology in ELT often cite the fact that it can facilitate autonomy and help the learners to be more independent. Sometimes, however, these concepts can be interpreted in different ways. Some technologies allow students to study independently, but don’t necessarily encourage them to be more independent learners. In other words, the learner is still dependent on the material to learn. Others encourage ways of organising learning, keeping notes, records of vocabulary, etc, and these both encourage the students to manage their own learning and to be independent as learners. There isn’t a totally clear distinction between the two, but the former is about having materials that allow students to learn independently of the teacher, while the latter focuses more on helping the students to develop their own learning strategies – which they could then apply to other things they want to learn, too.
VideoNot.es
This powerful tool fits more into the second category described above. It was recommended by Nik Peachey, and I think it is superb. It allows you to make notes as you watch a video from YouTube or any other online video site. The notes are time-stamped, so you can go back to a note whenever you want, click on it and you will automatically be taken back to the relevant part of the video.
I am a huge fan of history videos, and I find that this is the perfect tool for noting down dates, difficult names and events as I watch. For an example, go to http://bit.ly/1laFy8B. Here you will find my notes on a video on Ancient Greece. Try clicking on the timestamps and see what happens. Note: It can take a few seconds to load, so be patient! You need to click on the actual timestamps (on the left of the notes), not the notes themselves.
I always worry that my students tend to watch videos rather passively, without interacting with them. Using this tool, they can play the videos, pause them, write up their notes and continue. Afterwards, they can review their notes, click on them and listen to the related section of the video again.
How it works
You need to have a Google account to make use of VideoNot.es. All your notes will be saved onto your Google Drive (free space where you can save Google files) and they are automatically placed in one file. When you open up VideoNot.es, you paste in the URL from your target video and upload it. Don’t forget to put a title as well. Click on ‘Play’ to watch the video and ‘Pause’ when you want to stop and make notes. Be patient, as there is sometimes a slight delay when you click on the buttons. Write a line of notes and press ‘Enter’ to move down to the next line. Once you get the hang of it, you will see that it really works well. Once you have taken your notes, click on the timestamps and the video will jump straight to that part.
Ideas for classroom use
Teaching new vocabulary
One obvious way of using this in the classroom is to ask the students to watch a particular video and simply write down the vocabulary they don’t understand. You could ask them to choose five words and to note them down when they appear in the video. Afterwards, they could check the spelling of their five words and find out what they mean. They could then click on the words and listen to them being used in the video.
Note-taking
Note-taking is a very useful skill and something the students are likely to use in their future business or university careers.
Choose a video and ask the students to listen and take notes, pausing the video where necessary and writing down only the key points. You might set a limit to the number of words or lines they can write. It is a good idea to go through one video as a class first and write notes together, so the students can learn how to look for the key points.
The students could work in groups, play a part of the video and discuss what notes they should take. I think writing notes collaboratively, with just one student sitting at the computer, would be very powerful.
Follow up these activities by asking the students to work in groups and discuss what they remember about the video. After taking notes collaboratively, they should be able to remember quite a lot.
Keeping minutes
If your students ever take part in meetings, they may be asked to keep minutes. This is quite a complex business skill, which requires recording both the names of the people and what they say. You could find a video on YouTube that shows a business meeting and ask the students to use VideoNot.es to practise taking minutes.
Working from notes
Make notes on a particular video, show the notes to the students and get them to predict what the video is about. They could do this in pairs or groups and then share their ideas with the class. Afterwards, play the video to the class, or get the students to play it in groups, to see if their predictions were correct.
Dictation
Use VideoNot.es as a dictation tool, getting the students to pause the video at intervals and write down everything they hear. What they write will be time-stamped, so it can easily be checked with the video commentary. Dictation is sometimes dismissed as an old-fashioned activity, but I find it quite useful for listening and spelling and use it myself when learning French.
A help video on how to use VideoNot.es can be found at: www.teachertrainingvideos.com/videonotes/index.html
Russell Stannard is the founder of www.teachertrainingvideos.com, which won a British Council ELTons award for technology. He is a freelance teacher and writer and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
