"YouTube video essays are long-form (relative to many other internet videos) critical videos that make arguments about media and culture. They're usually meticulously narrated and edited, juxtaposing video footage, images, audio, and text to make an argument much like a writer would do in a traditional essay. As former YouTube talent scout Jeremy Kaye puts it, video essays "take a structured, in-depth, analytical, and sometimes persuasive approach, as opposed to the quick 'explainer' video style."
Why Are They Great for Learning?
"It's easy to dismiss a lot of what circulates on YouTube as frivolous, silly, or even obnoxious, but video essays are the opposite. They demand students' attention but not through cartoonish gesturing, ultra-fast editing, and shock value (which even some of the more popular educational YouTubers fall prey to) -- there's room to breathe in these essays. To capture attention, video essays use a time-tested trick: being flat-out interesting. They present compelling questions or topics and then dig into them using media as evidence and explication. This makes them a great match for lessons on persuasive and argumentative writing.
"Video essays model for students how YouTube can be a platform for critical communication.
"But what I really love most about video essays is that they have something at stake; they ground their arguments in important cultural or political topics, exposing the ways media represents gender or race, for instance, or how media evolves over time and interacts with the world at large. Most importantly, video essays model for students how YouTube can be a platform for critical communication."
Via
Jim Lerman
I found this via Lee Watanabe Crockett's post, but wanted to share Samantha Lile's full version. Lately I've been focused on students as consumers of digital information. It's important to remember they will be--indeed, they already are--creators of digital information, too!
We'll be doing a digital storytelling project later this year, so I'll be sharing these tips with our student authors.