Engage Students Using Video

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Video Transcript

Hello everybody. This is Jeremy from Awana YM, and we're talking about using video with your students today. What I want you to understand about video is this is something that was really difficult when we were young, some of us, and now is super-duper easy. Everyone has a video camera in their pocket. If you have a mobile device, you have a video camera and you can essentially film anything you want. My children film things all the time that are the most ridiculous scenes you've ever seen, but your students are getting better and better at using video. They're posting videos that they like and they think are funny, but they're also recording their own lives.

I want you to take time to watch the videos that your students are making. Some of them are making them about silly things or baseball games or all kinds of different things that they're doing. Watch the videos they're posting because it'll give you some insight into what your students are learning and doing. More importantly, videos have a tremendous capacity to teach, to engage your students as they come to your group. As they spend time together, you can use videos to capture their imagination and their attention. That would be very easy, just go online, find some cool stuff and play it for your students. That's one way of doing it, but I want to push you even further.

When I was in California a couple years ago, I met a young girl who basically told me that she wanted to grow up to be a filmmaker. I said, "Well, what's stopping you?" She said, "Basically, the adults that I know won't let me do what I want to do because they're scared I might break the equipment, because they're scared I might actually make a video that they don't like." There were all kinds of things she said they were scared of. By the end of the day, I was doing a training and I actually sat down and talked with her leaders and said, "Listen, I want you to promise me that you'll let her go back and at least learn how to start making videos. Even if you don't let her do it on her own because you have some expensive equipment, start teaching her because we need students to grow up with these kinds of skills." You want to change Hollywood? Put people in it who are faithful believers who grew up in church learning how to make videos.

I allowed my students to do this when I was a youth pastor. I would ask them, "Hey listen, we're actually going to do a service for the entire church and I want you to make the video that helps teach this particular point." I even had them do promo videos for me of silly things that they were doing with their friends to promote an activity or an event that we were going to. I've used video for all kinds of different things but the key was this, when a student makes a video and everyone else knows it's the students video there's energy, there's electricity, there's buzz about it. Almost as though a student was in a band and the band was going to perform and everybody got to hear the band for the first time. The first time they show a video, the first time they premiere it in front of anybody is a powerful thing, not only for the person who made it but for all their friends, they get excited. Even if it's not the best thing you've ever seen, let them learn, let them get better, because the videos got better and better.

When I asked my students to do the one for the whole service, they brought a video in I was actually looking at thinking, "You guys did this? You didn't hire out your production company?" They had gotten so used to the software, so knowledgeable about film and camera angles and all the different things that make up a good story and how to show that to people, that I was blown away by what they were capable of. If you want your students to engage, and you've got some, you've got some students who love this, you're going to have to give them space, space to learn, space to fail, space to grow. As they do that, you're going to watch them expand and grow, not only in what they're capable of but what the people are capable of around them because they'll be telling them stories, they'll be showing them things that they've never seen before from a perspective that's uniquely from the students for the students.

This opportunity sits in front of you, but you're going to have to make the choice to open that space to them and help them become the kinds of filmmakers, the kinds of video creators that God meant for them to be. To learn more about using technology with students, you can download the free e-book, Eleven Ways to Engage Students Using Technology.

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