My interest in developing collaborative observations and using video-based professional development to support teachers and promote best practices in teaching and learning at my school is gradually solidifying. We will focus on using Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching as a foundation in developing best practices in Fall 2011. The project will be based on the three principles of video-based professional development presented by Rosella Santagata (2009): (a) attending to content-specific understanding, (b) scaffolding analysis of student thinking, and (c) modeling a discourse of inquiry and reflection on the teaching and learning process.
The three teachers with whom I have been working with will continue to participate in this on-going project. We are currently researching professional development methods that can support us in developing a coherent process. Additionally, the team is trying to limit the usage of Google groups for reflections and discussions. We will continue to use Flip Cameras to document classroom interactions and collaboratively explore WordPress as a tool to document and post files.
I just suggested Jack look at VOCAT too! And I agree with Joe’s reasoning for suggesting it. Actively annotating the video content can both formalize the process (vocat has some very formalized evaluation tools, which would have to be changed for your use) and also makes it archivable. Which is also important.
I would also suggesting thinking about placing yourself and your project somewhere in the middle of the ephemeral class discussions and a video catalog of a large number of classroom videos.
No one wants to look through 200 videos to maybe find something that will help them in their teaching (not that you suggested this in any way). What I’m suggesting is that as you work with this project you will see a large number of videos and start to recognize patterns and examples of what to and not to do. Becoming a kind of curator of these videos you can then think about annotating and presenting a small set of highly targeted videos that are useful for a broad audience.
So you can use each video with the teacher as a form of professional development and at the same time look to cherry pick pieces from it to show in a different content to a larger audience.
The power of video as a tool for faculty development is well-documented. I think that where you could add more is in the area of actively (and collaboratively) annotating some of the video content. What usually happens with these videos is that they are viewed and discussed, in a live classroom setting, and that’s certainly powerful. But I think that some of the potential for future reflection and ongoing reference gets lost with the ephemeral nature of these discussions. This project could have a greater impact if you also ask the teachers to annotate each others’ videos (and their own) in a way that will keep those annotations public and share-able, and available for future continued reflection.
VideoAnt http://ant.umn.edu/ would be one good tool for this and Baruch’s VOCAT tool (soon to be released) might be another.