Video Capture in the Classroom

Video capture is a great way for teachers to observe the effectiveness of their teaching. For example, while watching a video of themselves and their students in action, they’ll think of ways they can improve their techniques and interact more effectively with students.

Teachscape, a company that provides solutions for professional learning and teacher evaluation, offers a variety of software and hardware tools to enhance professional development. Coming soon to Teachscape will be the Teachscape Pano Camera System—the latest in video capture technology. This camera can record over 8 hours of instruction, view classrooms at any angle, and with its omnidirectional microphone, can “hear” student voices no matter where they are in a room.  It’s also easy to set up and move among classrooms.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

Can good teaching be measured? Temple University Professor Ronald Granieri says that efforts to evaluate teachers through quantitative means “are susceptible to interpretation and manipulation”, and even if these problems are avoided, what we discover is not really what we want to know. New Jersey Superintendent Lorraine Cella agrees. She asks how such evaluations will be able to tell us which teachers make a difference in students’ lives? According to Cella, “My greatest worry is that teachers will fade into deadly, robotic, fit-the-rubric nonentities” because their goal is to achieve a certain score, not change students’ lives. As we try to figure out ways to fill our schools with the best teachers, how do we keep them in the system if we don’t understand how to evaluate hard-to-measure qualities that make teaching a profession?

Evaluating Apps

How do you know if an app will work for your students?  Don’t just insert apps into your courses because they may cover what you want. Think of how they bring content to students and whether they propel students on to additional learning. Put your critical thinking skills to use when you evaluate an app. If an app doesn’t make use of the potentialities of 21^st Century Skills, is mostly glitz, and/or is actually a worksheet put into digital format, why bother with it? To help you, Silvia Tolisana, using rubics and updates from Harry Walker, Kathy Schrock, and Greg Alchin, developed an iPad Evaluation flier that can be used in all classrooms.

Are Online Courses Are Effective?

Who’s to determine if online schooling is working? Or perhaps the question should be rephrased: Are all students involved in online learning keeping up with what they are supposed to be learning? The problem is accountability. Because of recent criticism of student progress in online courses, some virtual schools are bringing students into schools for testing; providing assessments and intervention throughout courses; determining if online students make adequate yearly progress compared to students in traditional courses; and keeping track of the length of time it takes students to complete assignments, how many times students and teachers interact, and how often students participate in courses. Because online courses are populated mostly by bright students who want to move ahead in learning and at-risk students who need additional help with learning, it is difficult to compare student achievement in E-courses to student achievement in traditional settings.  According to Michelle R. Davis’ Education Week piece, E-Schools Put Specific Measures for Success in Place,  much of the criticism was focused upon private, for-profit online courses, but public schools have taken these criticisms to heart to make sure their online learning opportunities for students are successful and accountable.

Teachscape’s Classroom Walkthrough

Evaluating teachers has never been easy, for it’s difficult to define in words the qualities of a master teacher. That’s because there’s no one path to becoming a great teacher; there’s no one way that it is best for all teachers to teach. The folks at Teachscape have, as their goal, helping those who supervise teachers to find effective ways to evaluate them. Teachscape’s Classroom Walkthrough 3.0 was honored with the Tech & Learning Award of Excellence. The program, called CWT 3.0, provides Web-based professional development that provides school personnel with consistent ways to collect data about teachers work in their classrooms. This data is then used to assist teachers in improving teaching skills. It has the ability to “tracks instructional improvement relative to research-based indicators”. Some of the indicators, referred to as ‘Look fors” were developed in partnerships with the Great Books Foundation and feature a focus on inquiry and higher order thinking skills.

Just What Is RTI?

RTI or Response to Intervention is a way of using information in a database to respond to student needs. Although generally associated with students with special needs, RTI is becoming more popular in regular classrooms, for it “is helping educators take a more active role in monitoring student progress.” eSchool News’  Senior Editor Laura Devaney in RTI: Not Just for Special Education discusses the pros and cons of RTI. Some say the system is an excellent way to meet the needs of all students while others find the method difficult to implement because of the “burden” on teachers and lack of funding resources. A number of companies have developed packages to help schools put the advantages of RTI to use. If you are interested in learning more about RTI, you’ll want to visit the RTI Action Network site.