Video Making to Support Science Investigations

Through the science curriculum, teachers can use students' passion for screen content to motivate them to explore innovative new ways to bring their science learning to life through video making. Communicating science concepts using multimodal literacies can be a particularly powerful way for students to learn about science, especially when they experience difficulties with traditional literacies (Dezuanni & Woods, 2014). With 'planning and conducting' and 'communicating' being two of the five sub-strands in the inquiry skills, students can record and share their investigation ideas through the use of different representations, text types and modes. With multimodal texts including typed text, still and moving images, and sound such as spoken voice, music and sound effects, there are many possibilities for how students can conduct and communicate investigation ideas. By extending students' skills for making multimodal texts using a range of technologies, their ability to engage audiences will further develop beyond the typical slideshow presentation. While slideshows will always be a valued example of a multimodal text, evolving digital technologies continue to provide 'easy to use' video and animation applications and software to make moving images with sound and text in addition to static slides. To support students in making videos, teachers can lead the way through making videos to support science education programs. Teacher-made videos produced in an hour or two can be more time efficient to use compared with spending several hours searching for appropriate videos made by others. Not only do students prefer screen content that is fun and engaging with youthful presenters, it also needs to be made with high production values and have educational relevance across learning areas to meet their ever-increasing high expectations (Cunningham et al. 2016, p.4). Teacher-made and student-made video texts can meet student learning interests and expectations within the science learning area, if made with care and attention for quality. The Curriculum Connections STEM (CC STEM) YouTube channel was developed by researchers at Queensland University of Technology based on findings from a national research project: the Australian Screen Content in Education Project. A key project finding was that YouTube is highly popular as a teaching tool and that video production is becoming a common activity in classrooms across the curriculum, as teachers and students turn to multimodal communication to develop and express knowledge in new ways. This article is an example of an activity inspired by CC STEM resources for science students in upper primary school.