Using HTML5 video subtitle function for language teaching

HTML5 is a new markup language for the World Wide Web (WWW). The final version of HTML 5 was released on October 2014.

One of the new functions of HTML5 is adding subtitles to embedded videos on the WWW.” This was not possible prior to HTML5.

This opens up great opportunities for use of this function in language teaching. Instructors commonly use subtitled videos when teaching a foreign language.

Without using HTML5, the instructor needs to embed the subtitle to the video files, which means that if you want to have videos with and without the subtitles, you need to have two movies. Up to now, if you wanted your video to have a choice of subtitles in Japanese and English or no subtitles, you needed to have three different videos for each option. This is very cumbersome.
The use of HTML5 eliminates such multiple numbers of video files. Instead of making one video for each subtitle, just one video file can be used for the different subtitles.

This presentation will show how to make such videos by adding subtitles using HTML5. Language instructors can learn how to take advantage of this useful newly developed technology.