Wagner and the Flip Camera, part 2

Yesterday, I looked at the use of videotaping of instructional lessons for the purpose of calibrating teacher understanding of effective instruction, and Tony Wagner's advocation for this process.

For the record, I'm a huge advocate for exactly this. But I don't want to oversimplify the issue. There are some problems with video that has to be overcome.

1. There has to be clear distinctions between professional development use and evaluation use. This is the same issue teachers had with me when I conducted walk-throughs. No matter how much an administrator says, "this is not for evaluation... it's just to gather data to help you reflect later," teachers are not comforted. And for good reason. There were several times when I made a walkthrough visit where I saw bad instructional practices going on that I had to address. If I enter a classroom and videotape a teacher who is sarcastically putting down a student, that has to be addressed, videotape or no. For this reason, teachers (and teacher unions) are naturally apprehensive. Where's the line?

A successful administrator will make that clear up front, that yes, there are some non-negotiables that will be addressed, video or no. And, a successful administrator will help facilitate a staff discussion about what those instances are, so it truly is a staff norm and not an administrator-created expectation.

2. The elephant in the room is time. Flip helps, but it still requires time to 1) know when a video opportunity exists, 2) capture video, 3) watch video for the opportune moments to share with teachers, and 4) then package the video so that teachers can effectively learn from it. And, time is exactly what administrators don't have. They will need to make time, emphasizing this over other things.

As an administrator, my walkthrough trainer had a good perspective on this. She mentioned that a successful administrator will clearly state to parents, teachers, students, or even their superintendent: "Yes, I'm looking forward to meeting with you. And I'll do that as soon as I am finished visiting teacher classrooms, to help our school become better." In other words, the principal needs to communicate to everyone that this is how their school gets better, and therefore, this is where my priority is.

3. Another problem, but one that will go away quickly, is the disruption videotaping causes. Simply put, turn on a videocamera and a class doesn't function the same way it normally does (which is great for a rowdy classroom).

But like walkthroughs, this goes away with repeated exposure. Once students get used to the practice, it becomes invisible. In fact, when I ramped up my walkthrough usage to "each class, 3 times a week", it took 3 weeks before students didn't give me a second glance. UNI's Price Lab is a testament to this, as their students are more than accustomed to visitors and outside eyes on a regular basis.

2 OTHER THOUGHS ON VIDEO
• Wagner didn't stop at videotaping classrooms, however. Another big use of videotaping is with student focus groups (especially graduated students... or students who dropped out). A pointed interview with students can get right at what they see as working well and not working well in school. We'll touch on this in a later post.

• Schools shouldn't (unless rare exceptions) show the entire staff the video footage of an individual teacher. That should be reserved for a more safe setting like a PLC. But the whole staff can still benefit from watching video from external teachers. Just as with evaluator training, there are video clips available that can be used (check with your AEA). And Angela Maiers regularly posts video lessons on her website along with a written post of what she is trying to accomplish in her lesson. Those are great places to start.

Wagner and the Flip Camera

One technology coordinator jokingly grumbled with me: "Darn that Tony Wagner. My superintendent goes and sees him last Wednesday, and now I've got to buy all these Flip cameras!"

Which was very near the first words out of my mouth when Tony Wagner told the audience on Sept 16 that his favorite professional development technology was the easy-to-use camera. I'm down on record as saying "there will be 200 different purchase orders for those cameras across the state tomorrow".

First off, the camera. It is very popular, even among camera enthusiasts (our Final Cut Pro trainer, a professional photographer, said that for video quality, the camera rivals many of the more expensive models). I'm not a video camera expert at all, but visiting with a couple of individuals at Heartland who are, they mentioned their Flip cam has better video quality than their 3-chip camcorders that were about 3 years old.

Of course, they also mentioned that while Flip was the rage, there are several viable alternatives out there that might be even better. One of which is the Creative Vado, that has gotten some press recently. Here's a list of some others.

The central point is, Flip or competitor, these cameras are point-and-shoot easy to use, yet still have a much improved picture quality. They are lightweight, which means an administrator could carry one in their pocket and be ready for any instructional moment. And, they are easy to load, as video is recorded in a FLV file (it doesn't have to be "imported", just copied). In other words, the workflow to go from video opp to video-watching opp is infinitely better.

THE GUSHING OF WAGNER
This is why Tony Wagner is a fan. He made several strong statements about why our schools haven't been able to improve. For example, "Teachers working alone, with little or no feedback on the quality of their lessons, will not be able to improve significantly, no matter how much professional development they receive".

This is a profound insight that I agree with completely. First, much off professional development stays in levels of abstraction, with words like "rigor", "rubric", "authentic assessment", "quality instruction", and "educational outcomes" bantered around. What PD is often short on is specific definitions of each with examples. A "high rigor lesson is... and is not..." with examples of each.

Because of that, teachers walk away from professional development re-inforcing their own understanding of what quality teaching is. We all agree "rigor" is important, and yet, we all have different classroom instruction. There needs to be the opportunity for calibrating.

Enter video. Have teachers watch video clips so they can calibrate their understanding of all professional development terms. What is this teacher doing well for classroom management? Is this teacher using effective formative assessment and feedback in this lesson?

But don't stop there. Allow the recording of teachers' lessons, and ensure the oppotunity for teachers to work with each other in PLC's. You can provide as much PD as you want, but unless you get to this level of analysis, where it comes back to the actual teaching in the classroom, you have no assurances of improvement.

This is all great, and I am a firm advocate for this practice. However, as I pushed back on the conversation at my table during the conference, there are huge pitfalls to doing this that need to be overcome. I'll look at those tomorrow.