DVD player

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about technology in school is a video I saw myself in school. Since I went to school during the 90’s computers and other technology was rather new in the classroom, but I clearly remember the video “En cellsam historia”.  It’s a video about how the human body works, from the smallest cells to the biggest muscles. Even though this was used in our natural science education, I come to think about that videos, or more likely today DVD, is a very good tool to use when teaching English. And it’s a rather cheep kind of technology, though all you really need is a TV and a DVD player. Thanks to the technique today with DVD, the teachers are able to choose what subtitles should be used for example. Or if there should be any subtitles at all when the students watch a DVD. This is something Dudeney and Hockly (2007) writes about in their book.

Kids today are often very familiar with the English language through movies, TV and video games. There for, I think DVD’s and short movies is a very good tool to use to get the kids interested. Since most students already are familiar with this type of technology, it’s something they could use by themselves as well and not have to depend on the teacher helping them. Dudeney and Hockly (2007) writes about the importance of always having an idea behind it as a teacher, whatever type of technology you’re using. Usually you use DVD and movies as a treat maybe on Friday after noons, but instead I think it’s a very good opportunity to get natural English education, though this is something most students are use to from home. Besides not using subtitles I think it’s important to make the students really listen and after the video has ended maybe retell the story to a friend (in English of course). This helps the teacher see how much and what the students actually have understood about the video/DVD.  One could also use short sections of the movie and make students reenact the scenes from it. Using this type of material and method is also something that is present in the English syllabus (Lgr 11).

And of course there’re many educational DVD’s out there for pretty much every subject in school. For example the one I mentioned above, but you can find educational DVD’s for many other subjects. Skolverket have material for teachers on DVD that covers everything to how to handle student’s sexuality, to history based movies.