 But let's visit another teacher, Esther Mapangwe from Lefence Senior Secondary Girls School in Soweto, who has prepared a lesson on a similar topic. Last time in our lesson, we were talking about continental drips. Do you remember when we were talking about... Esther has also prepared a lesson on volcanoes, but has decided to use video to illustrate her lesson. What does she do to make this lesson more than a passive viewing experience? I pause where I think I need to emphasize certain points, and then I explain to the learners. The questions that are joined together, what do we call them? Esther watched the video at home and decided to pause the video to highlight important points. She asked learners questions to keep their viewing active. By incorporating these carefully planned interruptions, she has in fact changed the nature of the video. She has turned a documentary on volcanoes into a new learning resource. I want you to watch the next part of the video. At some stage, I'm going to switch off the volume, and I would like you to watch without the sound, but I want you to watch very carefully and thereafter tell me what was happening and what have you seen. Video can be overwhelming to the learners, with both sound and moving images bombarding them at the same time. Esther decided to improve learning by turning the volume right down at one point so that learners could focus on the image of a volcanic formation rather than be distracted by their accompanying soundtrack. Up to this far. What have you seen? The blocks move from each other, when the volcano occurs. Good. Did you all see the blocks moving apart? Yes. And then there was a hole from underground and something was coming from the underground going upwards. And then they've seen the whole video with my explanations. Then I allow them to watch it on their own without any interference. And I'm not going to interrupt. I would like you to watch very carefully and tell me how the land where the volcano is occurring, how that land is affected. Instead of giving the learners verbal instructions on what to look out for, Esther could have prepared a worksheet beforehand. In this way, she would have focused learner attention on the most important points, as she would have been able to actively involve more learners. But Esther demonstrates some very important points about good media use. She has clearly familiarized herself with the technology of the video recorder and can thus teach with confidence and without embarrassing breakdowns. Even if I do not have a video for that part of the section that I am dealing with, I try by all means to record what I see on TV at home. And this helps me a great deal because they understand better.