Learning and Leading - June/July 2009

be able to see, but also invites repeated watching. It also allows the application of science process skills such as observing, inferring, classifying, predicting, measuring, communicating, and generating hypotheses.

Mathematics. Advanced digital technologies have changed the way mathematicians think about and do mathematics. Digital video can be used to present challenging mathematical questions, improve students’ visualization of mathematics concepts, and offer opportunities to analyze situations and models leading to mathematical descriptions of relationships. Digital video can engage students in thinking about mathematics in ways previously difficult to achieve, especially when it is layered with other interactive media.

English language arts. In science, social studies, and mathematics, digital video is used as a mechanism for learning about a subject area. In language arts, digital media has become a new mode of communication to be analyzed as well as used in learning. Students outside the classroom are increasingly consuming and creating multimodal compositions that include images, sound, and digital video.

Classroom projects using digital video offer an authentic framework for exploring the concept of nonprint text and new literacies.

Digital video offers important new teaching opportunities across the curriculum. Today’s teachers and students can access and view millions of digital resources through the Internet. Analyses of digital video are made easier than ever by software that can overlay and combine representations allowing visualization of underlying patterns. Using simple free digital video tools, teachers and students also can create video by combining photographs, documents, maps, audio clips, and even snippets of other videos. These capabilities allow students to explore concepts that would not be as accessible otherwise.

Every day, people carry one or more devices for capturing, watching, and editing digital video. Adults might not realize that their cell phones can record video or that they can watch You Tube on their tiny screens, but K– 12 students are actively engaged in using these features to document their lives and explore the world.

When digital cameras became ubiquitous, ISTE published Teaching with

Digital Images. This book was a collaboration among four teacher educator content associations representing science, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. It summed up important trends in the tools and possibilities for applying this increasingly ubiquitous technology to K– 12 classrooms.

A companion volume scheduled for publication, Teaching with Digital Video, follows the same logic: Digital video is permeating our culture and the ease with which it can now be acquired, edited, remixed, and disseminated creates new pedagogical affordances. The four articles that follow provide illustrations in each content area.

Glen Bull is a co-director of the Center for Technology and Teacher Education in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. He can be reached at gbull@virginia.edu.

Lynn Bell works with the University of Virginia Center for Technology and Teacher Education. She co-edits the online journal Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education ( www.citejournal.