This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley. He is the founder of Next Vista for Learning and the author of Making Your School Something Special.

What if once or twice every year your students made short videos that could help everyone in class prepare for their exams? What if these videos became a collection that students in future classes could use to become more comfortable with challenging ideas?

One high school English Language Arts teacher in San Jose, California, did just that by having students enter a video contest with an insight on some topic they’d covered over the year.

The videos cover writing, Hamlet, Frankenstein, poetry, word use, and much more. Here is an example of a video exploring the idea of onomatopoeia:

Demonstrating Onomatopoeia

This is one of over 130 videos her students have created which were posted to their collection at NextVista.org. Find the full set here. If you teach high school English, hopefully it’s a collection that will be useful to you and your students, too!

If interested in making this happen with your students, the folks at Next Vista for Learning can help. Contact them here.