Exploiting Annotated Video to Support Dance Education

This article deals with the employment of annotated video in order to support dance education. More specifically, it is investigated the usage of multimedia technology in learning and teaching of Greek traditional dances. One of the issues faced by the teachers is that they do not have the opportunity of practicing Greek traditional dances before they teach them in a class of students. Therefore, there is a specific need for the teachers of physical education to recall the Greek traditional dances that they should teach in Primary Education schools. Furthermore, the pupils want to attend many times the performance of a dance in order to learn how to dance Greek traditional dances. The only means to support the teachers are (a) books which describe the Greek traditional dances in, a rather abstruse, symbolic language and (b) face-to-face seminars, which are not suitable for wide scale training due to time and cost limitations. More specifically, the article investigates the added value offered by annotated video presentations to support the learning and teaching of Greek traditional dances. The evaluation by a large number of students showed that annotated video presentations of a dance are helpful for the experienced dancers and neutral for the novice dancers.