Media Analysis (Or using viral videos)
This one is pretty simple. There are hundreds of videos available on the web. Some represent good science, some are REALLY bad!
I asked a middle school teacher to show these two "viral" videos (both are horrible!) to his classes. After watching each video, students were asked to individually brainstorm a list of questions that they had about the video. I then categorized their questions.
62 students asked 490 questions. Of these, 3.3% of students asked a question related to the source of the question (Who made this?), 3.3% asked a question about the authenticity (Is it real?), and 0.61% asked about the motivation for creating the video (Do they want us to not like cell phones?). The remaining questions (representing almost ALL of the students) asked "content" or "process" type questions that would not lead to determining if the video was real or a fake. (What do you think?)
65 students asked 426 questions. Of these, 3.8% of the questions asked about the source, 3% asked about authenticity, and 0.00% of questions were about the authenticity. It should be noted that these students "learned" about plate tectonics the year before. (FYI: Neal Adams is a great cartoonist, but horrible scientist. He seriously believes this stuff -- as do others-- even though he admits that he doesn't do any of the math.)
Classroom Application: These viral videos present a great opportunity to teach specific media literacy skills in the science classroom. In addition, many of these videos (and the ones shown in the next example) provide a great starting point to have students generate questions about scientific phenomena. Here is an example of how you could do it with the popcorn video.
You could also show a video and simply ask students "Is it real?" After they have debated in small groups, explicitly help students analyze the video by first determining what types of information they would need to know (what types of questions would they need to ask) and then determining how they could find that information. For example, to understand the popcorn video, I used fact sheets from major brands of microwaves and manufacturers of cell phones (to determine the wavelength range and power). Once I knew this, it became quite obvious that you would have to use hundreds of cell phones. I also did a web search for UN & US safety regulations for cell phone power (all are well below the danger level).
What would you need to find out in order to analyze this video?
(NOTE: Mythbusters "busted" this...and so did a lot of science blogs)
You may find these resources (File Conversions) useful if your school blocks YouTube videos from playing.
Comments (20)
Noel Ingram said
at 12:06 am on Jun 18, 2010
I am guessing you want an answer to your question on this page??
I would think you would need to know the speed at which the man is traveling down the hill and the angle of the ramp.
Mrs Clement said
at 12:39 pm on Jun 19, 2010
You would need to know the rate of speed, velocity, and distance? Crazy people!
Bill Laufer said
at 1:10 pm on Jun 19, 2010
Being that the height of the starting point is barely higher then the height of the ramp depending on the friction he would not make it up the ramp or just barely pop over. I am guessing that the blue thing just ramp is to catch the guy. Then editing takes over from there.
Kelly Burke said
at 11:57 pm on Jun 19, 2010
Our lab techs tried the popcorn trick when this was first circulating...didn't work of course. But it had to be tested!
Nancy Bryant said
at 4:17 pm on Jun 21, 2010
These videos were really interesting, and I'm sure my students saw them. What I really like is your post about Teaching Kids to Think - I had never heard the ABC philosophy, even though that is a goal in all my classes. I would like to have an activity - or a hook - for each new concept I teach. After only three years back in the classroom, I am not quite there! I had also not heard the problem solving approach stated quite like McCain's 4D - I really like the way you wrote up the activity in response to the video. The students in physical science and chemistry would get into it, I think. I still have questions each year about microwaves causing cancer, which is always a good hook for the electromagnetic spectrum.
Annie Hesterman said
at 2:29 pm on Jun 25, 2010
The weight, speed, velocity, angle of trajectory, etc. would all need to be examined. I think using videos like this to think critically would be an excellent tool. Students could design entire experiments, demonstrating their understanding of the scientific method based on proving the authenticity of these videos. Not only could it be a "hook" (I'm still working on getting more of these, too, Nancy) but it could be used as an assessment tool for experimental design.
Ginger Hamlin said
at 11:50 pm on Jun 25, 2010
I loved the waterslide video when it first came out. What a great concept! It's obviously fake since the guy wasn't going nearly fast enough on that small of a ramp to travel the distance shown in the video. Furthermore, the landing wasn't angled right. But it's still entertaining and looks like it would be fun if it did work! I wonder how many "jackasses" have tried this for themselves! LOL I think this would be a great physics lab problem. Determine the velocity needed to be traveling, the height of the ramp and the angle of impact for a safe landing.
david buck said
at 8:24 am on Jul 6, 2010
I had the thought of using Insane Clown Posse's "Miracles" video in class: "help ICP figure it out" or something like that. But there was just too much profanity. Instead I posted the 10 party tricks on my Edmodo.
Murray Metge said
at 4:07 pm on Jun 21, 2011
Murray Metge said
at 4:13 pm on Jun 21, 2011
Opps, that is why I am in this class. Submitting blank comments is my specialty!
I like these thinking videos, it engages the students and I have had some great class discussions with the slippery slide one. It does amaze me though that each year I show it (the last 2 years) there are a lot of my students that have not seen it. I am sure that next year they will have mostly all seen it. It will be interesting just the same. We talk about friction, velocity, trajectory and acceleration. The big part I bring up is the room for error. If this was done for real it would take only a slight human error to miss such a small target.
Kevin Kenealy said
at 11:13 am on Jun 24, 2011
Yikes...some of this stuff is scary because of how students believe everything they see on the internet. Maybe an assignment should be for students to create a video that shows something that cannot happen in the real world and see what types of comments they get from people and after a set period of time the students have to come up with another video that explains how the first video is false? Maybe an idea.
Heather Alexander said
at 12:32 pm on Jun 24, 2011
Great idea! Another idea I have used with 8th graders is taking them to sites that are obviously false. I've used them to open discussions about valid information when doing research projects, but other applications viable. Two of the sites I've used are:
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
http://www.buydehydratedwater.com/
These are fun to explore with kids and many projects and discussions are possible!
DuShane said
at 4:57 pm on Jun 24, 2011
I really like this idea. Kids love videos, especially ones about crazy topics on YouTube. They are always trying to show me videos on YouTube (only usually ones of their own stunts), so I think getting them to really think about science this way would be a good fit, especially at my grade level (8th).
dana blomquist said
at 11:16 pm on Jun 24, 2011
I like Kevin's idea of the false information experiment. It would be a great way to teach students how to be discerning and analyzing of websites. My first thought regarding the cellphone/popcorn video was to try to recreate it in class. From there we could go in to why it doesn't work. Knowing my students, they'd move in to how they got it to work on the video. They'd be likely to run with it all day, designing their own investigations and following them through.
Christine Jones said
at 6:46 pm on Jun 25, 2011
I love giving students the chance to figure out how to prove it themselves. They love things from MythBusters. I can already think of where it can slip in to our energy unit.
Carol Smith said
at 7:27 am on Jun 26, 2011
I like the old Myth Busters, where they would plan everything out on a green sheet and emphasize their use of the scientific method. I always wanted to use one as an example, but I didn't want to watch an entire episode with all the extraneous stuff. Is the a simple way to just show the sections of interest?
Linda Kocian said
at 12:28 pm on Jun 26, 2011
I must be doing something wrong...I am following Dale Basler's directions for embedding videos, but mine doesn't embed. When I preview my blog post, all I see is the embed code. Any idea what I need to do differently? Thanks!
Kevin Kenealy said
at 5:04 pm on Jun 26, 2011
Linda, I saw that you are using a blogger account. I found that on blogger they want you to use their little buttons rather than embed code. What you do is when you make a post you will see on the same bar as the different fonts and what not there is an icon that looks like the little scene clapper from the movies. If you click that icon it will take you through the process of either uploading from your hard drive (and the video has to be in a particular format and I don't know which one) or you can upload from youtube. I found uploading from youtube to be the easiest. Does this help?
Linda Kocian said
at 11:21 pm on Jun 26, 2011
Thanks, Kevin. I actually ended up just pasting the embed code in the Edit HTML window rather than the Compose window and it worked!
dana blomquist said
at 1:27 pm on Jun 30, 2011
By having the students recreate the things they see in media (or research them if recreating them is not safe), I feel that we are taking a huge step toward teaching our students to be more discerning in their consumption and belief of what the see on line. Seeing isn't always believing.
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