Ideas for Using Video Observation from Across the Country
Video observation and coaching can look different within every organization.
At the 2016 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, professors from four universities presented on the strategies they employ in using video with teacher candidates in their programs.
The presentation was brimming with useful content and insight.
Teacher Self-Reflection
Heather Johnson of Vanderbilt University outlined how video has proven to be a useful tool for encouraging teacher self-reflection in a methods course.
“We’ve found that video provides students and instructors a common text to view and analyze teaching,” Heather said. “This has proven particularly useful when working with teaching novices who are all going through this teacher training trajectory together.
Professional Learning Cycles
Later, Marti Elford from the University of Kansas detailed how she uses Edthena to implement professional learning cycles with teachers. 
“My students were uploading one video a week. And so as our numbers grew, organizing the video submissions became more difficult,” Marti said.
“Explorations allowed us to organize their submissions both week over week and in accordance with what kind of video they were sharing. Whether it was of whole-group instruction, small group instruction, etc.”
Peer Coaching & Lesson Study
Suzanne Arnold from the University of Colorado Denver described how she and her team use Edthena to facilitate multi-week, guided reflection cycles with students and their peers.
One of these cycles is a type of lesson study. First, students capture video of their classroom teaching, share them with instructors and peers, and identify areas of potential change. Students then try new strategies within their classroom and document the impact. This is followed by one more round of reflection and debrief.
edTPA Support
Kirsten Lathrop of Marquette University closed out the session explaining how using Edthena supports assembling and transferring the required edTPA® artifacts for submission for official scoring.
Edthena partners will present again at the 2017 AACTE Annual Meeting in Tampa.
