Have you ever used video in your teacher preparation courses? Or ever watched your own teaching on video? The most recent issue of Educational Technology published a special issue on uses of video analysis in teacher preparation. On Friday, Feb. 5, a panel of the authors discussed the ways in which video they’ve successfully used video annotation tools in the classroom as well as various considerations for choosing an appropriate video annotation tool for your own purposes. To see a video of the recorded Webinar, go to: http://connect.byu.edu/p50244516/
Recently a colleague of mine wrote that he always struggled to teach video creation and editing in his introduction to computers course because he questioned its value in the K12 classroom. This attitude surprised me. I see so much value in creating video in K12 settings for purposes of professional development (which I have posted on previously), alternative assessment, and media literacy. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are interested in serving the Teacher Education division by running for an officer position please e-mail Drew Polly at drew.polly@uncc.edu. You should include a one paragraph professional biography.
Thanks,
Drew
*UPDATE: this seminar has been rescheduled for 11 Dec. 2009 at 2:00 p.m. EST.*
Dr. Judy Duffield of Lehigh University and her Education students will present on a series of Web 2.0 tools they have been exploring for use in the K-12 classroom. Come participate in a brown-bag-type Webinar where you can learn creative ways to use Web 2.0 tools to improve your own classroom experience.
We can accomodate up to 25 connections in an interactive on-line discussion, so please register now at http://aectted.eventbrite.com. To attend the Webinar, log in as a guest at http://connect.byu.edu/web2/ on Friday, Dec. 11 at 2:00 EST
An effort was commissioned by the US Dept of Ed, and Linda Roberts (past U.S. Director of Technology) is spearheading it as a consultant through SRI International.
At this point they are soliciting commentary and input from educators through social networking tools. See their solicitation…
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It wasn’t too many years ago that I taught preservice teachers how to add attachments to email messages. Few if any of them knew how to do it. Current preservice teachers laugh when I relate the story. The Internet (at least Facebook) is a part of their daily lives. This week, the news media is speculating over the future of computing because Google provided more details about its web-based operating system. Some people are even posting whether hard drives will become obsolete. Obviously those individuals have never attempted multimedia authoring.
While Web 2.0 technologies attract the media these days, a few browser add-ons also deserve praise. This post is about three of them. Read the rest of this entry »
For several years I have read about open source software and have even tried some on many occasions. I am familiar with OpenOffice, Gimp, and Scribus (to name a few). I have installed copies of Ubuntu and other Linux flavors to see what they have to offer or to create bootable USB drives. Yet, I never relied on these programs. They were geeky toys that piqued my occasional interest. Sure, I used Audacity to record participant interviews while collecting dissertation data but these recordings acted as backups to my digital voice recorder. Open source software was the equivalent of a souvenir—periodically collected for show but never intended for long-term use.
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Another convention has come and gone and once again I am left with new ideas, greater interest in the field, and many fond memories. This year I was enthralled by Alan Buss describing the ability of Lego Mindstorms NXT to captivate the attention of both college and K12 students while simultaneously engaging them in logical thinking and mathematics. I hope that Santa will bring me a set this year. I was captivated by Michael Blocher as he described a three-year, longitudinal professional development for rural teachers and its success in helping them become experts in technology integration. I enjoyed hearing Martha Green describe how she helped preservice teachers to increase their own narrative voice through the use of a digital storytelling. I also enjoyed a poster presentation by Peter Rich where he described his theory of convergent cognition—studying complimentary subjects (like French and English) for their own ends but gaining shared insights from each that reinforce the other. The convention was an excellent opportunity to learn and be inspired.
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Today the Instructional Psychology & Technology department at Brigham Young University had the opportunity to host John Seely Brown, the first author of the now famous 1989 Educational Researcher article, “Situated Cognition.” It’s been 20 years since he, Allan Collins and Paul Duguid published that seminal article that has literally changed the way people think about learning. Listening to him today, it’s clear that his ideas are as important as ever. It’s impossible in one post to discuss all that he shared with us. In this post, I want to share an idea he calls the rise of the pro-amateur.
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The TED board met and discussed upcoming conference activities and other desiderata. You can download the meeting notes (they were taken collaboratively in Google docs, so the different colors indicate additions by different authors.
We are looking for someone to serve as the Historian for the Teacher Ed division.
Duties entail:
-maintaining record of division officers and awards
If you are interested e-mail Drew Polly, drewpolly@gmail.com
With the Obama administration targeting student teaching and field experiences as an indicator of teacher preparation, teacher education programs across the United States will have to re-evaluate how they help novice teachers examine and reflect upon classroom experiences for professional development—particularly when faculty cannot frequently visit individual classrooms. Fortunately flash-based camcorders and iMovie 08 (or higher) may help.
While teacher preparation programs have long used video as a means to review and critique teacher practice, recent advances in technology have greatly facilitated this process. Until a few years ago, even using digital camcorders required long wait times (often one-to-one) for teachers to transfer video footage to computers for editing and reflection. However, with the advent of Flash-based camcorders these speeds are greatly reduced. An hour of footage recorded on a Canon FS-100 for example, takes only 10-15 minutes to import into iMovie 08.
iMovie 08 or greater also includes a slew of functions for teacher educators interested in collecting and examining video evidence for purposes of professional development and reflection. For starters, iMovie 08 preserves raw video footage (only copying selections to particular projects) in case accidental deletions or alterations occur. This allows individuals to examine both raw footage and student-selected instances for feedback and assessment purposes. Additionally, teachers can tag video segments based on user-defined keywords and search and filter those tags for purposes of reflection and professional development.
To see a short video about how to tag video clips in iMovie 08, see http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/imovie08.html#tutorial=tag
Because users can create their own keywords (which are automatically assigned hot keys on the keyboard), teachers interested in examining practice can generate their own rubrics, hierarchies, or taxonomies into iMovie to evaluate classroom performance. The scrubbing features built into iMovie also facilitate and reduce time associated with video review and analysis. Users can browse their videos in real time or scrub through them quickly using the mouse. iMovie automatically creates thumbnails of video footage that can be zoomed in for greater (or lesser) detail.
Once raw video has been tagged, users can filter their footage based on the keywords they selected. iMovie will automatically display the keywords used. By clicking on one or more of these keywords, iMovie will then display all of the tagged clips corresponding to the selections.
Of course there are limitations with using iMovie 08 for coding. Primarily, it does not distinguish between coders. Because of this, when multiple users code the same video you will not be able to determine who tagged what. Additionally, iMovie does not allow users to provide comments on their tags (e.g., rationales for tagging, background information to provide context for the clip, etc.). Finally, iMovie and (these coding processes) is a stand-alone application available Macintosh computers only.
However, for an application that comes bundled with all Macintosh computers, iMovie provides a great tool for teachers who want to systematically examine classroom practices without spending lots of money for professional video analysis systems.
Here is the report.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is in the midst of collecting input on their classroom observation tool for technology integration. You can learn more about ISTE’s Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT) at http://icot.craftyspace.com.
You can provide feedback using the survey at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJLPwU3BrDZ4ea2gbSqrcTg.
Please encourage the participation of others, too. This feedback is important.
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