Why Use Video in the Classroom? Teachers, who use instructional video report that their students retain more information, understand concepts more rapidly and are more enthusiastic about what they are learning. With video as one component in a thoughtful lesson plan, students often make new connections between curriculum topics, and discover links between these topics and the world outside the classroom.

Video is uniquely suited to:

• take students on impossible field trips--inside the human body, or off to Jupiter
• take students around the globe, to meet new people and hear their ideas
• illustrate complex, abstract concepts through animated, 3-D images
• show experiments that can't be done in class
• bring great literature, plays, music, or important scenes from history into the room

By exploiting the medium's power to deliver lasting images, teachers can:

• reach children with a variety of learning styles, especially visual learners, and students with a variety of information acquisition styles
• engage students in problem-solving and investigative activities
• begin to dismantle social stereotypes
• help students practice media literacy and critical viewing skills
• provide a common experience for students to discuss