Videotelling Handout

Hello there!
Thank you very much for a great day in Montevideo. I hope that you enjoyed the Performance in
ELT conference as much as I did. And I hope you took lots of ideas away with you.
As promised, here is my handout. It contains the ideas and activities that we looked at in my
morning workshop and my afternoon plenary.
You were lovely people to work with and I hope to come back again one day soon.
Jamie :)
hello@jamiekeddie.com
Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

keddie
.com
Videotelling (the workshop)
In my plenary, we deconstructed the most viewed

animal video on YouTube: The Sneezing Baby
Panda:
Video here:
https://goo.gl/n79aWp
1. An introduction to the sneezing baby panda video

I made this video last year when I was going through a YouTubing phase! In the video, I share six
reasons (my own theories) about why the sneezing baby panda video was so popular:
Video here:
https://goo.gl/7h4Usn

keddie .com
2. Isolated audio
We can use an isolated audio track to engage students with a video narrative. In the talk, I played
the sneezing baby panda video so that you could hear it but not see it.
In the classroom, you can do this and ask students to guess what is happening in the video. Ask
them to speculate about what’s going on. There are a number of ways to do this:
* Invite students to ask you closed questions to work out what is happening in the video.
* Put students into groups and ask them to collaborate and come to a consensus ides.
3. Using video cameras to obtain spoken samples of language

Mobile phones are great for bringing friends or family members into your classroom. In the
following video, three expert users of English attempt to guess what is happening in the video after
hearing the audio only (see above idea.).
Video here:
https://youtu.be/pdZlQQLErl4
* Alan is a colleague
* Alastair is my brother
* Anna is a teacher that I worked with
Videos like these can provide the spark for students’ to share their own ideas. They can also
provide students with valuable target language.

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4. Activity: Say what you see
For me, this is the most fundamental video activity for the language classroom: Find a short video
with a strong narrative, Play it two or three times for your students and then ask them to write a
paragraph to put the narrative into words.
Following this, ask students to compare their texts. Ask them to look for differences in:
* Temporal aspects (past or present narrative)

* Length of tense
* Details that they have included in their text
* Language choices
I like to let me students compare their texts with one that I have written myself. Here’s mine:

keddie .com
5. A language point
In describing the sneezing baby panda video (or the isolated audio) it is very common for the
present/past continuous to be lines up beside the present/past simple. Compare paragraph 1 with
paragraph 2 in the following:
1. Rich in -ing structures
So, in the video there are two pandas in a zoo: a mother and her baby. The baby is lying on the
floor, sleeping; dreaming about whatever it is that babies dream of. Meanwhile, the mother is
taking advantage of this moment of peace. She is sitting in the corner, eating a snack. We have
no idea where the father is or what he is doing.
2. Rich in simple structures
Suddenly, something unexpected happens: the baby lets out an incredibly loud, high-pitched
sneeze. This terrifies the mother – it makes her jump.
It might look like we are dealing with two different tenses here. But, in fact, the difference between
-ing structures and the past/present simple is not about time. It is about aspect.
In this video, Scott Thornbury explains aspect better than I can:
Video here:
https://goo.gl/bXLzdY

keddie .com
6. Prediction activities
I have always liked tasks which involve students guessing what happens next in a video. In 2007, I
launched a website for teachers called TEFLclips (now called Lessonstream). The very first post
was a video prediction activity titled Unexpected Bodily Function.
You can see the activity here:

http://lessonstream.org/2010/06/27/what-happens-next-i/
You will see that in the activity, I make heavy use of the
phrase: To get a fright
A few months after uploading this activity, I received an

email from a teacher. He asked me why I had chosen to
teach this phrase. According to him, get a fright was low
frequency and not particularly helpful for students.
I completely disagreed. As far as I was concerned, there

was no way to describe the mother panda’s reaction that
was as descriptive and natural as get a fright.
I decided to prove him wrong. The result was the

sneezing baby panda project.
7. The sneezing baby panda project

I was desperate to prove that most people would use the phrase get a fright to describe the mother
panda’s reaction. I picked up my video camera and started to chase friends, colleagues, students,
family members and even complete strangers. In each case, I would ask my subjects to describe
the sneezing baby panda video. If they were already familiar with it, then great! If not, I would show
it to them and then ask them to describe what they had just seen.

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I filmed approximately 50 individuals describing the sneezing baby panda video. Here is a selection
of them:
James and Jess:

(James has seen it and Jess is trying to guess what happens)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elsI_AlDhL0
Edmund:
https://youtu.be/14hA150apeM
Melissa:
https://youtu.be/xfpbEl8dv1U
Levi:
(Did things differently and wrote a poem)
https://youtu.be/u91mz3WAU7c
So how many people used the phrase get a fright to describe the mother panda’s reaction? Here is
a montage to give you an idea:
Montage:
https://youtu.be/rB9qGksa1Ho
The answer is: 4 people used the phrase get a fright:
My mum: https://youtu.be/huZ_ZR-5_bs
My dad: https://youtu.be/17fmsrLMxtM
My sister: https://youtu.be/HmPJh-OaZtY
My brother: https://youtu.be/jx-MnxmBFyg

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8. A transcript-first approach to video
During the session, I demonstrated a transcript-first approach to video. I showed you two
transcripts and asked you to guess which one came from my mother and which one came from my
grandfather.
My grandfather’s video here:

https://youtu.be/DvU-9j_wh8E

keddie .com
This ‘transcript-first’ technique is one that I use a lot when creating video activities for the language
classroom.
Here are a few other examples on my site Lessonstream:
* Mr W
A story about a character who gets on people’s nerves
http://lessonstream.org/2007/11/09/mr-w/
* Procrastination
When you have to get your stuff done
http://lessonstream.org/2008/04/01/procrastination/
* Brilliant toilet
Why is this man annoyed when his friend tells him about a brilliant toilet?
http://lessonstream.org/2010/02/24/contagious-disease/

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9. Internal narratives
Although we talk about video activities, the actual resource is the narrative that plays in the mind
of the viewers (or students) in response to the video.
Consider the diversity of descriptions that came from all of the individuals who took part in my
sneezing baby panda project: the details that they noticed; the questions that they asked; the
language choices that they made; the way that they connected with the video.
In response to any video, we all construct our own narrative. This is what I call the ‘internal
narrative’. Although we dealing here with a 15-second video involving two pandas, the potential
for interpretation and personalisation is huge.

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10. External narratives
We can explore external narratives – stories about the video. We can investigate the who, what,
where, why and how behind the video.
In the case of the Sneezing Baby Panda, the video exists in its own online ecosystem. Online,
there are hundreds of thousands of references to it. It has been referenced in popular culture.
There are parodies, remixes, mashups, remakes and more.
Sneezing baby human

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izBJu1IWI94
The panda gets the bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4tIn0UzkF0
Sneezing baby panda reaction video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn6QayP1fD0
But where did it come from? Was it caught on camera by a visitor to a zoo? Or did it come from
CCTV in an enclosure at a panda breeding centre.
This question led me to a Skype interview with Lesley Hammond and Jenny Walsh, producers of
TV nature documentaries that were responsible for the existence of the sneezing baby panda.
Lesley became the 51st subject in my sneezing baby panda project. In the following video, she
tells us the story:

keddie .com
Lesley Hammond tells the story of the sneezing baby panda:
(Note that the video contains subtitles)
https://youtu.be/fQ8ulGPFaFk

keddie
.com
Videotelling (the plenary)
1. My first day in the city

I went for a walk and I saw, what can only be described as an invasion – an invasion of
Montevideo.
There was a crowd of people. Some of them were standing around Montevideo. Some of them
were running around Montevideo.
There were children crawling through Montevideo; a man standing on top of Montevideo;
women climbing over Montevideo; teenagers jumping off Montevideo.
Poor Montevideo – it was surrounded. What sort of people were these?
Video here: https://youtu.be/pz_b2aZck1k
1. Dictate the following phrases or write them on the board:
* standing around Montevideo

* running around Montevideo
* crawling through Montevideo
* standing on top of Montevideo
* climbing over Montevideo
* jumping off Montevideo
2. Read the text to students and finish with the question (What sort of people were these?) Ask
students for suggestions.
3. Read the text again. This time pause when you get to the prepositions in bold (see above) and
encourage student to recall them.

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4. Again ask students to suggest or guess what sort of people these were.
5. Show the video.
6. Give out copies of the text. You could turn it into a gap fill.
2. Frog fail
This is an interactive story script to use with your students. You will probably have to pre-teach
some of the language (pond, dragonfly, twig, predator, prey, etc.). Alternatively, you can adapt the
text to your language learners’ level.
Imagine this:
A hungry frog hiding in a pond. His eyes just above the surface of the water. Above the pond –
sitting on the end of a twig – a tasty-looking dragonfly.
Can you draw that?
So that’s the situation: a hungry frog hiding in a pond. His eyes just above the surface of the water.
Above the pond – sitting on the end of a twig – a tasty-looking dragonfly.
What do you think happens next?
[Take some suggestions from students.

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As quickly as he can
Predator leaps at prey
He opens his mouth
He sticks out his tongue
He stretches out his arms
But oh, what terrible timing:

At that exact moment
The dragonfly remembers something important that she has to do
And she flies away
[Ask students to suggest what she has to do and where she goes.]
The frog falls back to the pond

And lands in the water with a splash
And he thinks to himself:
"I'm glad that no one saw that. It would have been quite embarrassing."
Unfortunately for the frog, there is something that he doesn't know.
[Ask students to guess what the frog doesn't know by asking you questions.]
[Answer: The incident was caught on camera, uploaded onto YouTube and has been viewed over
a million times. To see the video, click on the link below]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcDPgd1V5Y
3. You deserve to get bitten on the ass by a dolphin

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP5Gaticbc4&t=2s

keddie .com
Videotelling
The final two stories:
- Left on the Shelf (The milk cartons love story) 

- An Act of True Love (Andrew, Isabella, and the hail storm)
… are from my new book Videotelling.
I would like to give you a 20% discount on the ebook.
* Go to: videotelling.com
* Choose your ebook format (it’s all explained on the site)
* At the checkout, enter the code Uruguay2017
Happy Videotelling!
Jamie :)

keddie
.com

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Hello there!

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

In my plenary, we deconstructed the most viewed

1. An introduction to the sneezing baby panda video

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

3. Using video cameras to obtain spoken samples of language

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

* Temporal aspects (past or present narrative)

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

1. Rich in -ing structures

2. Rich in simple structures

In this video, Scott Thornbury explains aspect better than I can:

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

You can see the activity here:

A few months after uploading this activity, I received an

I completely disagreed. As far as I was concerned, there

I decided to prove him wrong. The result was the

7. The sneezing baby panda project

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

James and Jess:

The answer is: 4 people used the phrase get a fright:

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

My grandfather’s video here:

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

Here are a few other examples on my site Lessonstream:

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

Sneezing baby human

The panda gets the bill

Sneezing baby panda reaction video

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

1. My first day in the city

Poor Montevideo – it was surrounded. What sort of people were these?

Video here: https://youtu.be/pz_b2aZck1k

1. Dictate the following phrases or write them on the board:

* standing around Montevideo

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

Can you draw that?

What do you think happens next?

[Take some suggestions from students.

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

But oh, what terrible timing:

The frog falls back to the pond

Unfortunately for the frog, there is something that he doesn't know.

3. You deserve to get bitten on the ass by a dolphin

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

- Left on the Shelf (The milk cartons love story)

… are from my new book Videotelling.

I would like to give you a 20% discount on the ebook.

Performance in ELT, 2017 jamie

You might also like

- Left on the Shelf (The milk cartons love story) 