Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Video Recorder In The Classroom?

I am for it. A few schools in the Seattle are participating in what they call a Video Club. Several teachers get together once a month for a couple of hours to discuss a 5-7 minute video clip from one of their classrooms.

The main focus of the meetings is the mathematics that the students are doing. The first topic of discussion is the math of the problem. Once the problem has been discussed they move on to possible misunderstandings the students could have. Once this has been done they watch the video. Then comes discussion of the what evidence the video provided about what the students understood about the math. Finally there is some discussion about questions that are still open.

All of the teachers said that they have gained insight into their own teaching as they have participated in the video club. It makes sense. Coaches at all levels watch video of their athletes in order to understand how best to help them. There are things you see in a video that are much harder to see in real time. If this practice has helped so many coaches to help athletes over the years, it should also help us help our students each year.

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