the conduit

Hi Stacy,
Thanks for your comments–I too have been coaching teachers using video. It sounds like the coaching sessions after the teacher viewed the video were very powerful. Thanks for sharing the notes on how you facilitated these meetings–I will try to follow your lead in some of my follow up sessions.

My video experience has been a little different. I have been recording 5 minute snippits of a class and then downloading the video to the teacher’s classroom computer immediately. I follow up with a Google form with the following questions:

1. What elements of your teaching were you most interested in observing in the video?

2. What comments do you have about your teaching regarding the elements you checked in Question 1?

3. What elements of your teaching were you pleased with? Why?

4. What elements of your teaching were you surprised by? Why?

5. What other elements of your teaching would you like to focus on as a result of watching the video?

6. How do you think viewing yourself teaching helps you as a teacher?

When teachers fill in the form, it automatically goes into a spreadsheet. I have collected about 7 of these so far, but as it grows, I expect to observe trends that will help provide focus for professional development and training.

I don’t want to diminish the changes that occur in adolescence but could it be that the difficulties experienced by this age group have a lot to do with how they are treated? Watch TV, read the news and look for the patronizingly knowing glances that adults share as they discuss the adolescent. Count how often young people’s behaviors or opinions are neutralized or dismissed as they are explained away through assumptions about hormones or brain development.  What would it take to give Adora’s hypothesis a chance–that we have much to gain from listening to young people?

The real game changing will be when publishing companies and resource creators come to understand the power of a device like this in every child’s hand. The textbook cycle in schools is incredibly expensive, and every time you buy a resource you realize you are buying into obsolescence. Subscription textbook services could make resource replacement an annual fixed cost for schools (with less guess work about when to replace outdated materials), protect revenue streams for publishing companies (we’re not going to get this for free, after all) while benefiting students with up to date (and instantly updateable)resources, rich, interactive media and embedded tools and links for teachers (standards and assessment materials). Again, Apple changes the game not by having the technology first, but by thinking about what the experience of interacting with technology can be like.