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This unit effectively bridged the gap in my familiarity with classroom technology as it was the last time I taught anything (late 1990's) and now. I am sure that for a good many years, before smartphones and maybe even now, schools still relied on TV's, cassette players, VCR's, and then DVD's. It must be the case that a good deal of instructional time can be saved by not having to rewind or fast forward anything while the students sit there, possibly losing focus or lapsing into L1. With the Internet, classroom-based use of Youtube might be good for short authentic clips, assuming the channel is ad-free. I mention classroom-based use not just because it's the focus of the unit, but I have seen some online teaching sites where the teachers give their learners homework links to authentic video without realizing that many English videos have automatic subtitles of varying quality and accuracy. As a main message of this unit is to make sure your boardwork or your overhead transparencies is accurate, I think that is something to keep in mind before starting an in-class video, only to find that the closed captions are on...and they're either feeding the learners too much, or they're full of mistakes. Depending how difficult or time-consuming it is, it would be interesting to film a short video and write one's own subtitles, but as gap-fill exercises. Learners would be challenged to listen carefully to find the missing word, and even the captions would not give the answer away. Learners could call out the missing word or write it down during a focused activity and give their answer when called on. Pure audio would be good as well, whether on cassette or mp3. When I was learning German, my excellent teacher created gap fills for German pop songs, and the result was extremely engaging and effective. In my thirty-year pursuit of learning and then teaching language, I really think you can't beat controlled snippets of audio or video input for all manner of aha moments with learners. Equipment changes but a teaching moment is a constant.
