It all began with a safe, curated solution for information gathering

Wendy was becoming increasingly frustrated with YouTube as an information-gathering source for her young students in their inquiry-based learning program. From ads and autoplay content to the time it was taking to find quality resources, it wasn’t working. “I thought, we’ve got to have different ways for children to get information,” Wendy says. “I came across ClickView at SLASA (School Libraries Association of South Australia), a librarians conference. Lots of teachers were talking about it and recommended it. The ClickView solution appealed to me because the YouTube approach doesn’t work for kids. It’s unsafe and uncurated. ClickView is curated, which was a key thing.” From there, East Adelaide Primary invited ClickView to give a presentation and then trialled it as a school. Wendy explains, “Once teachers had it, they didn’t want to let it go.”

Supporting quality research for inquiry-based learning

The video content on ClickView has proved useful in the opening phases of research, to help open and immerse children in a particular subject area. “I’m trying to encourage them to find information from audio-visual, and that’s challenging because they’re used to sitting there passively,” Wendy explains. “It’s a different form of comprehension. ClickView is a facility for teaching those audio visual skills, which is what I was looking for.” She understands this process of transformation will take some time to fully embed, but her students are getting into the swing of things. The library at East Adelaide is set up to support this process, with a big screen for whole-class watching, and a space for small group watching. “Note taking from audio-visual is a new thing for a lot of young children, who see video as entertainment,” says Wendy. “What I’ve been trying to do is give them time during library lessons to learn these skills.

Since becoming more accustomed to the platform and at the suggestion of advisor Hayden, East Adelaide has begun using ClickView for group research. During this process, one student in a group of three has the responsibility of sourcing appropriate videos from ClickView to incorporate into their research paper. The students have also learnt how to cite ClickView films under the “Digital Library” section of the Online Referencing Generator. “This allows us to marry up the resources we subscribe to within the school, ensuring that each resource is complementary and well used,” explains Wendy.

Looking ahead to the possibilities for learning

Wendy believes the relationship between a school and their ClickView representative is crucial. “The two reps we’ve seen are fantastic and they know just how to talk to teachers,” says Wendy. “What’s next for us is to incorporate strategies like the interactive videos, to transform the video watching experience from passive to interactive.” East Adelaide are planning an upcoming session for teachers to learn more about creating their own interactives. “In the meantime, the online tutorials and webinars are really good,” enthuses Wendy. “I’m excited to spend some time understanding the possibilities for us.”