AIT Indexing

July 20, 2008

Services

Indexing

A learning object like this animated journey through the earthworm body plan opens up many instructional opportunities in the classroom: It can be used by teachers who don’t have dissection facilities; as a reference for students who were absent on dissection day or are struggling with the concept and need a review; or as an asset for students to use in their own presentations. (Video from “Annelids: Lords of the Rings,” The Shape of Life.)

Indexing (sometimes called “chunking”) is the process of inserting “play” and “stop” commands into a digital video so that teachers can easily isolate a segment or clip that is essentially a complete LO—a small, reusable chunk of instructional media. Teachers can then use these learning objects in a dynamic lesson—playing, replaying, and combining lesson-targeted video clips to suit their instructional needs.

With this technology, teachers are no longer tied to the problems of analog VHS tapes, such as showing an entire program when what they want is a 3-minute section in the middle. Nor are they left with the chore of searching several programs based on a short package blurb, hoping to find something they can use, locating the clip they want, and then having to remember the time code for later use.

Video indexing—the selection, description, and markup of educational clips by trained professional educators—means teachers can concentrate on the lesson they want to teach, not navigating a collection of VHS tapes hoping to find a clip that fits. Indexing is used for both online and DVD technologies.