Video Transcript

It might seem funny at first, to talk about how to watch videos. We all do this, sometimes multiple times a day, right?

But learning from video is a different activity than watching a video for entertainment. If you are like me and my son, we often watch videos on a phone or tablet at the same time as we're messaging friends or watching television or playing a game. That doesn't work when you're watching a video for a course. You want to make sure that watching the video is the only activity you're doing and this activity is more than just click-and-play and sitting back to be entertained.

The power of video lies in the control you have over it. The play, pause, and rewind buttons are important tools to help in your learning. Use them often as you're watching and taking notes so you can go back in the video to check your understanding of it.

You'll notice I mentioned taking notes. Taking notes and creating drawings while learning helps your brain to better make sense of new information. So flopping on to the coach might be comfy but it also might make it tricky to take notes as you learn. So set yourself up in a place where you can easily write or draw your notes down. Put on some headphones to limit outside distractions if you can't find a quiet spot in your environment.

And like any notes, organizing the information you take with titles, headings, subheadings along with the time stamp when you saw it in the video can help when you have questions for your teacher or just to quickly locate important information when you're studying for a final evaluation or for a project.

And once you're done, once you've watched your video and taken notes, watch it again and you may be surprised that you missed something the first time around. The more we watch, read, and write about new information the better we learn it so watch it as many times as you like.