VIDEO AS WRITING STIMULUS - STUDENTS CAPTION OWN VIDEOTAPES

Mardi Loeterman
Director of Research
The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)
125 Western Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02134
617-492-9258 (voice/tty)
mardi_loeterman@wgbh.org (e-mail)

Ronald R. Kelly, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Educational and Career Research
Center for Research, Teaching and Learning
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Rochester Institute of Technology
52 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623

Web Posted on: December 12, 1997

The project described in this paper was funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, grant #H180E30021.

Herb (a pseudonym) is watching a silent Charlie Chaplin movie with his language tutor. He rewinds to the first scene and watches again. This time he pauses the video and imagines what the character on the screen might be saying. Herb, who is severely dyslexic, types the dialog on the computer in front of him. The sentence is creative, but it's so full of spelling errors that the word processor's spell-checker doesn't recognize many of the words. Though Herb is 16 years old, he uses little punctuation. His tutor, Barbara, offers suggestions for proofreading and tactics for sounding out words so that the spell-checker can be of use. They print out the text and go over spelling, grammar and punctuation rules. When they're satisfied with the text, Herb adds it to the video, putting words in the characters' mouths. He is delighted... he has just captioned his first videotape.

The problem for Barbara was how to get Herb, a student whose written language skills were at a low level, to put effort into learning the necessary skills. She hoped captioning would capture Herb's interest and keep him engaged over time. In all, working with increasing independence, Herb spent 21 of his daily tutoring sessions using captioning equipment to write dialog for a short section of the movie. Barbara describes her experience incorporating captioning technology into Herb's remedial writing lessons:

• "Herb was very intent on writing clear, complete sentences with good spelling, possibly because he would be sharing his captioned video with others.... In order to caption, Herb needed to determine areas of the video that would benefit from captioning; this made use of some of [his] higher level thinking skills. He gained some confidence, possibly, from this activity which might have made the other steps less awkward for him. Herb next needed to retrieve words and phrases to fit his thoughts-- a difficulty for him. Next, he needed to sound out words and spell them phonetically so that the spell check could find him reasonable substitutes. This seemed to be the most difficult task of all...
• "The quality of Herb's work was initially very poor and he often had difficulty spotting errors. When we added a check list of things to proofread for, and he checked for only one type of error at a time, however, he was much more accurate. Herb's generated language was often very simple and very slowly produced. He seemed to pick up speed with the many days of practice and the confidence that success brought. Repetitious wording was another problem that we were able to add to the list of proofreading trouble spots.... One of the supporting post lessons was having Herb verbalize the steps he took to write interesting, varied sentences that were correct technically. This was a step that was logical since he needed to be able to explain the process at an open house at our school. It was also immensely beneficial, in my opinion, because the steps he took in this writing exercise are ones that he will need to repeat as he struggles with writing...
• "The greatest success was in the practice of basic writing and editing skills. The episodic nature of the video provided a frame so that the activity did not seem endless. More importantly, Herb 'overlearned' some skills-- sentence completion and using the spell check function. These are criticial skills for Herb and he is a student that needs to drill so that he can retrieve the processes without effort. The captioning activity provided the interest so that he was willing and able to sustain the necessary practice."

Herb's story is dramatic but not unusual. Students with less severe needs and students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, have also benefitted from writing with video and producing captioned videotapes.

Unlike typical ways of watching video, the process of writing with video is highly interactive. Students control the pace at which a piece of video is presented and the number of times it is presented. They must concentrate on what is happening while they watch, which forces a deeper understanding of the content or interactions on the screen. The specific writing task varies from student to student. Some compose sentences that describe a process unfolding on the video, while others summarize the main ideas presented in the video, demonstrate what they know about the content of the video, or even translate from the language of the video (for example, American Sign Language) into English. Or, like Herb, they creatively add their own dialog or narration to a silent story. After typing the text, they use special software and hardware to superimpose their words over the video.

Researchers at the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf worked for three years with more than a dozen teachers at six schools, including Barbara and others at her high school. Together, the researchers and teachers explored ways that writing with video might be of special benefit to K-12 students. Half the students who participated were deaf or hard of hearing and half had a learning disability. Teachers were encouraged to develop captioning activities that suited their classroom environments, their curricula, and the learning needs of their students. Captioning activities incorporated video that ranged from the silent film used by Barbara and Herb to content more appropriate for math, science, social studies, and language arts lessons. In order to understand benefits to students, as well as issues around implementing the technology in the classroom, the research team collected a range of data, including student writing samples, interviews with teachers and students, teachers' field notes, paper surveys, staff observations, and comprehension tests.

Some preliminary aggregate results are available. Regardless of how much time students spent captioning, from a few weeks to an entire academic year, most retained interested and motivation throughout the project. Almost all students who participated found that the process of captioning helped them focus and attend to writing. As a result, they wrote more willingly and for longer periods of time than usual. Except for those students who were asked to summarize, they wrote longer and more elaborate texts than usual, often incorporating new vocabulary and ideas they had been studying in related lessons. Many of the caption texts had better internal organization and cohesion, compared with other writing samples from the same students.

Several factors may be at play, including the technical environment for captioning and teacher-student interaction. Technically, the video plays a critical role. It provides a topic for writing and the content is structured sequentially. A student's ability to slow or freeze the video appears to support both vocabulary and content knowledge building. The discrete steps involved in the captioning process help students organize their writing. The repetitive nature of the task gives them many chances to think/rethink about the best way to express their ideas; it also reinforces new skills and knowledge.

The most effective captioning activities were associated with specific teacher-student-equipment interactions. One, teachers had specific learning objectives which they communicated clearly to the students. Two, teachers designed the activities so that students were actively engaged in every step of the process. Three, teachers gave the students targetted feedback which directly linked to their objectives, and/or they set up situations in which students could receive such feedback from peers.

Another important factor was common to all activities that yielded positive student outcomes: they were iterative and sustained. Students repeatedly applied feedback from one session to the next and were given the chance to master their skills. Once the students had mastered the technology and captioning process through repeated experience, they developed self-confidence to write with greater independence. Clearly, a key element of Herb's success was the fact that he had repeated opportunities to practice his skills and Barbara gave him the tools to work well on his own. With help from Barbara, Herb developed strategies for assessing his writing, a typical outcome for students engaged in iterative captioning activities.

Remedial language arts tasks are often uninteresting and by nature often involve content that the student perceives as juvenile. How can teachers get a low-functioning learner to make a sustained effort with remedial lessons? Captioning is perceived as grown-up technology; its use results in a grown-up product, a videotape with the students' own captions. Many remedial activities can be modified for a captioning environment, which keeps students' interest levels high. The captioning process affords many opportunities for students to receive positive reinforcement from their teacher, classmates, and even families, while the product itself gives students a tangible sign of success.

A 16-page handbook, called Writing with Video: an idea book for captioning in the classroom, has a diagram of necessary equipment and outlines the steps involved in captioning. It also contains dozens of classroom-tested ideas for integrating captioning into the curriculum, whether the students are learning disabled, deaf, bilingual, or more typical. Writing with Video is available from:

The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)
125 Western Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02134
617-492-9258 (voice/tty)
ncam@wgbh.org (e-mail)
www.wgbh.org/ncam

For details about hardware and software requirements for captioning (for both PC and Macintosh platforms), contact:

Barbara Ross
Universal Learning Technology
39 Cross Street
Peabody, Massachusetts 09160
508-538-0036 (voice), 508-538-3110 (tty)
unilearn@aol.com (e-mail)