Starting with Video Clips for Educational Presentations

The idea behind this Tech Corner blog is to introduce educational tech methods we have found useful. I am starting with video clips or animations since I would like others to try these teaching tools with less effort than I needed to get started (please skip it if you do this already). Needless to say, in this age of YouTube, video clips can get students interested, and often, if done well, can show dynamic processes more clearly than words or still images alone. I have a previous article in the JIAMSE (2005) on making and using a longer clinical case video in neurobiology and am submitting another article on brief animations and video clips inserted into MS PowerPoint slides.

An easy illustration is inserting the interactive animation "Steroid Hormones in Circulation" in a presentation on endocrine physiology, pharmacology, or biochemistry, at the address http://www.healcentral.org/content/collections/UCinReproPhys/1-5-1creditcirculation.swf on your browser. This animation shows endocrine cells secreting steroid hormones which then bind to various plasma proteins, with information on bound and free hormone concentrations on the screen. You can start with a shape on the PowerPoint slide, then use the Insert menu to insert a "Hyperlink" into the shape, and paste into the Hyperlink information screen the address to that animation running on your browser. Now when you View the slide show and that slide is displayed, clicking on the shape will display the animation.

Another good example is the "Hyperheart" animation of the cardiac cycle (like the previous example, this is found on the Project HEAL web site, from the University of Utah). It can be inserted via a Hyperlink also, with the address http://library.med.utah.edu/kw/pharm/hyper_heart1.html. This widely-reproduced animation by Dr. Don Blumenthal and the Knowledge Weavers at the University of Utah shows shows ventricular and atrial pressures and EKGs synchronized to movements of heart chambers and valves.

My preference is to show a still picture excerpted from the animation with labels-- Left Atrium, Left Ventricle, etcetera--and describe to the students what they are going to see to set the stage for the animation, in which there is a lot more going on. The Hyperlink can be inserted within the the picture of the heart or other object, so that clicking on it starts the animation.

If you have animations or video clip files in .mpg format the process is more direct since they can be inserted or linked to an image in the slide without running a web site on the browser, as long as the file is in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. A good example is a video clip from the web site "Introduction to Cochlear Micromechanics”, by Dennis Freeman of MIT, with the link http://umech.mit.edu/hearing/intro/intro.html. This shows animations and micro-videos of cochlear hair cell movement in response to sound. When you create the PowerPoint slides, you can copy and paste a photo of hair cell stereocilia from the web site, use the Insert menu to Insert > Movies and Sounds > Movies from File, and paste in the file name of the video. Remember that the video file needs to be saved in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. During the slide show, clicking on the image shows the stereocilia pivoting and opening ion channels to provide a great illustration of physiological processes in hearing on the microscopic level.

Have you used video clips and animations in basic science teaching? What do you recommend as best practices or problem areas? Sharing your experiences could help your colleagues with this powerful teaching tool.