Lights, Camera, Learning!.

30 Learning & Leading with Technology | June/July 2009 media underwent a transformation from analog to digital formats during the transition from the 20th to the 21st century. In fact, this year the analog broadcasting network in the United States is being replaced by a digital system. This tipping point is a cultural shift as well as a technological transition. Older analog technologies were relatively fixed and unchangeable. Celluloid film was revised by cutting and physically resplicing the pieces in a different order. The process for editing an analog videotape was almost as cumbersome. Once revised, it was necessary to make physical copies to disseminate the revisions. In contrast, digital video is easy to revise and disseminate. From 1948 to 2008, NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcast more than a million hours of programming. In the past six months, individuals posted more than a million hours of original video on YouTube alone—more than the networks broadcast in the previous 60 years combined. Michael Wensch, a digital ethnographer, reports that youth contribute the majority of posts on YouTube. The 10,000 hours per day posted on YouTube are the equivalent of 400 continually broadcasting channels. They are posted in the form of 200,000 three-minute videos intended for an audience of 100 or fewer viewers in most instances. The shift from analog to digital video transformed the system from a unidirectional analog broadcast to a two-way conversation, resulting in the birth of participatory media. Digital video offers new opportunities for teaching science, social studies, mathematics, and English language arts. The professional education associations for each content area are devoting extensive thought to ways digital video might be used to strengthen student learning. The affordances of digital video that appeal to these educators differ substantially based on the nature of their content area. Social studies. Today, digital video is taking its place alongside other forms of historical artifacts such as photographs, maps, newspapers, and texts. Many social studies teachers already take advantage of documentaries and Hollywood films to investigate the big ideas of history, geography, economics, and civics. Video can add motion, sound, and a sense of real life to social studies instruction. Further, teachers can guide students through documentary projects in which they engage in critical thinking as they work with digitized primary sources—the raw materials of social studies.