Teaching with Documentaries
As I prepare for fall classes, I am having my annual dilemma over content I want to share with my students. This semester I'm teaching two classes that I've taught before: 1) Global Perspectives on Natural Disasters and 2) Global Change (I'm team-teaching the second one). In both classes, I use a textbook but also assign additional readings and show short and long documentaries during class. I like to think of the videos as multimedia reading assignments that give students something to think about and discuss. But just like articles and books, I can only show the same documentaries for a while until they become outdated. So each time I have to decide if it's time to retire that favorite video or show it one more time. A great example is The Trouble with Malaria . It's an episode of the CBC series " The Nature of Things " and gives an excellent overview of the disease and struggles to fight it. But it was made 20 years ago! I've been showing it in GE...