A year ago, my MacBook needed to be repaired at the local Best Buy. To keep my social media efforts going, I ordered a Chromebook from Amazon. This was delivered within a couple of days. The purchase came with one terabyte of free memory on Google Drive.

For a while, I pondered how to take advantage of this free memory, an example of the amazing technology available today.

At first, I digitized many of my martial arts DVDs and uploaded them to Google Drive. Whenever I have downtime, I watch these videos on my iPhone.

Unbelievably, I had used only 43 GB of the one free TB on Google Drive.

Then, a month or two ago, I experimented with taking video snippets of my classes, uploading them to Google Drive, and emailing the links to students. Some were having difficulty with the names of the techniques. Whenever I asked them to execute a certain technique, some would go blank until I demonstrated it. “Oh yeah, I know that.“

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qw_ZrY16HUQ0u7x0M7pLzCPPWwtv2Qu2/view?usp=sharing

Click on the link to view a 9-second clip.

The recollections of Maestro Sonny Umpad’s students inspired me to do this. They often said that he filmed their private lessons and gave them videos for homework. With this tool, they evaluated Maestro Sonny as well as themselves. Click here for an example (this YouTube channel has disabled embedding)

With this in mind, the rules for my students are simple:

  1. If you show up for class, I will email you the link to the video;
  2. If you don’t show up, you don’t get the links to the video snippets for the class you missed; and
  3. Further, I told my students that these snippets (typically 15 to 30 seconds long) were not meant to be “tutorials” but only meant for retention purposes.

Thus far, the feedback has been positive. The video snippets have helped them retain the material that I teach in class. Of course, it’s up to the students to take advantage of the videos and learn from them. If they don’t, it’s on them. 

Why am I doing this?

I am interested in finding ways to help my students progress in the art. If football and basketball coaches use film to evaluate their teams, why not martial arts instructors? As stated above, the videos are used mostly for retention. However, some of my students have noted deficiencies in their technique when watching themselves. That’s a good sign. ? 

Further, by evaluating my students via video, I also evaluate myself as an instructor. Am I doing an effective job of teaching the material? Where am I lacking? Where can I improve as an instructor? I constantly evaluate my teaching concerning my classes and private lessons. As is the case with everything else in life, experience is a great teacher.

Using video technology as a teaching tool is only part of my teaching evolution. I rely much more on lesson plans based on who I think will attend and what the students need to practice. The days of “winging it” is over. I would often go to class, see who was there, and decide on the spot what to teach. This proved to be quite unsatisfactory for me. As a result, my students have improved quite a bit over the past couple of years.

Amazingly, I have used up only 48 GB of my Google Drive memory. Lots of room for more video snippets! 

Over to you, do you video your classes or private lessons? How have they turned out? How do you take advantage of today’s technology?

Additional Reading