At present, I try to show one five to ten minute video for each of the major concepts covered. My goal in writing this article is to encourage other educators, particularly those with large classes, to use custom-made instructional videos in class. I can testify that my videos have a positive and lasting effect on my students. Video is a great alternative. For example, I often want to demonstrate pictorially what happens while a program is running.
Videos stand out in the viewers' minds.
At the end of every semester, when the students rate the course, many of them remember the videos and call them helpful and enjoyable. The methods I use for creating videos are available quite inexpensively to Amiga owners. Some of the techniques are somewhat brute-force, but the results are perfectly good for classroom display. I tend to use a mixture of animations, still screens, and C programs. Once all of these are made, I just connect a cable from my Amiga 1000's composite output to my home VCR, and then dump the results to tape.