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 developmentâparticularly 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.
Posted by craig.shepherd
Education, Resources, Teacher Education, Technology Integration
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These new features sort of bridge two philosophies in the teacher video analysis world. On the one hand, you have folks like me that want to be able to tag, filter, and sort video, losing none of the original content. On the other, you have folks like Brendan Calandra at Georgia State University that have found that students are more critical of their work when they are involved in actually editing a video. With this feature of iMovie, I can now do both–I can tag and filter videos and then, when I want to produce a product, I can cut the movie and produce a perfect case example of the video.
This is a really nice feature that could really help facilitate observations. Is there anything similar for those using PCs?
I’m definitely going to take advantage of these features to tag, sort, and edit! What do you mean by filter Peter?
By filter, I’m referring to the ability to tag portions of your video and get just those results. In some video analysis tools, you create “events” or “clips.” You can associate those with a tag set. For example, I might have a teacher observation instrument and tag “classroom management” and “pedagogy.” I can then filter and get just the “pedagogy” clips. This is non-destructive, meaning I’m not really cutting the video (which means I can have overlapping clips). The bad thing about non-destructive, is it makes it difficult to edit a final product. It seems that these features would allow me to create a project where I can now do both of these things.
Interesting and good for video research, thanks.
I am not aware if something like this exists for free on a PC. Peter Rich just published an article in the Journal of Teacher Education that reviews several video analysis tools. You may want to check out that piece. Viddler (an online video program located at http://www.viddler.com) allows users to tag video and attach comments to it–which iMovie does not do. You could always provide a rubric/hierarchy, etc. in paper form and have users refer to it as they make comments in their videos. Additionally, it works on both Macs and PCs, allows for 500 MB uploads per file, and provides privacy controls so that users can determine who has access to the video (vitally important when you are recording students in classroom settings).
Thanks for the free advertising Craig. If anyone’s interested, you can see the article at http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/con.....1/52?rss=1.
I’m very excited to see this advancement and that other options like Viddler are available. Until we have capabilities for video work that are as accessible and user-friendly as other Web 2.0 programs (for blogging, making websites and wikis, etc.), it is very difficult for preservice and practicing teachers to perceive video analysis an authentic tool. If we want video analysis to become a valued professional activity that our preservice teachers carry into their beginning years of teaching, tools of this sort are essential.