Digital Video in Social Studies Education

Digital video has a wide range of uses in social studies.

Most obviously, it can be a repository for social studies content, such as video of events, people, and places. The subject might be a historic milestone (e.g., the United States' declaration of war on Japan) or it might be a scene from daily life (a snowball fight on the streets of Paris).

Digital video can also be an explicitly instructional object, such as a documentary or a teacher-created video anchor.

Finally, digital video can be a student product, as well, allowing students to pose their own questions and illustrate their own understandings of social studies topics.

As you view videos and consider their use, keep in mind the importance of context. In the context of instruction, a digital video can be used for a variety of purposes: to elicit questions from students and initiate a discussion, to summarize prior instruction, or to be cited as evidence when building an argument. In the context of student work, a product-oriented project might value technical execution and polishing of the pacing, audio quality, image selection, and so forth. A more process-oriented project, on the other hand, would not result in such polished work.

Digital video is an exciting, expanding area for social studies instruction. Enjoy, and please share your thoughts with us!

Thomas C. Hammond and John K. Lee
Excerpted from “Digital Video in Social Studies Education”
(Teaching with Digital Video: Watch, Analyze, Create, ISTE)

Check out these example videos:

Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex Time is a Good Idea) (YouTube)

Less Crowded in 2008 (YouTube)

Saxon's blog containing links to more Tokyo train videos
Scroll down to the entry for 2008/07/21, “Tokyo Morning Trains (February 1991).”

Whitehouse YouTube channel

Remember the Context!

Keep in mind that digital video, like other media, bridges the contexts of subject, production, and viewing. If, for example, you are showing a Department of Defense newsreel about the Vietnam War as part of a lesson, the subject is the events of the war. The production comes from the Department of Defense and therefore serves its ends. Finally, by showing it in your classroom, you are bringing it to a 21st century viewing audience and attempting to use it for your own instructional purposes. If your students are not aware of all of these contexts, they may misread the video or your purposes!