Monday, November 18, 2013

An Obvious Flaw...

I convinced a teacher friend of mine to set up the Teachscape camera in her classroom and record one of her class sessions. After recording, she came back to me and acknowledged that the system was very easy to use and that she wanted to use it more often. However, she also pointed out something that seems rather odd.

The new Teachscape Reflect system utilizes iPads to record and upload lessons. But, because playback and editing occurs via the web, the iPad cannot display the video as it is Flash-based. It seems rather silly to me that playback and editing cannot occur on the same device on which it was recorded. So, teachers would not be able to record a session and then see it immediately. Rather, since it takes about 15 minutes to upload about 50 minutes of video, teachers would have to wait to begin their self-reflection. Further, they would have to go and find another piece of equipment on which to watch it.

I told the teacher to make sure that this is one of the things that she mentions on the feedback form at the end of the year. I know I will be.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Gaps and Questions

The more I read for the Lit Review, the more I find that I’m reading the same thing: video recording in the classroom has been studied to death…for new teachers. I have yet to find any literature that sought to implement video self-reflection in classrooms with experienced educators. While this is a gap that I wish to fill with my own research, I wonder why no one else has followed up on this rather obvious and easy question.

Another void in the research literature that seems rather apparent is why such technology has to be “pushed” onto some educators. Even though I have over fourteen years teaching experience, I know that I still have a lot to learn about myself and my own practice in front of a classroom. And while I don’t know of any teachers who would argue against that point for themselves, I know of some who would balk at recording themselves in front of students. What I don’t know is why.

Lastly, in all of the articles I have read, the successes reported seem to revolve only around teacher opinion of how they have improved their practice. There does not seem to be any evidence of how video self-reflection has a direct tie to student achievement. Of course, if teachers are improving their practice, one would think that there is an obvious correlate in student success. Perhaps. But without a direct, one-to-one connection, we are relying merely on teacher opinion on which to measure the usefulness of the equipment.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Finally got my hands on a Reflect Camera!

Last Monday, I was tasked with teaching my teachers an in-service lesson during faculty meeting. The principal had asked me to share a PowerPoint he had received on classroom management. Because the slideshow contained the same boilerplate material that I knew my teachers would already have known, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: I would teach the lesson as he wanted, but I would also take the opportunity to record it with the Teachscape Reflect iPad system. This would also afford me the opportunity to discuss the system with my teachers (aka, my future test subjects!).

The initial setup was a breeze; however, I am certainly glad that I got the system out and tested it well before faculty meeting. This is because I found out that the account that the district had initially set up for us was changed. While it was not big deal to create a new one, it was better to do it while I had time on my hands rather than in a rush. Once I was in, I noticed that Teachscape had really simplified the setup for the iPad. There is a large, red record button. Press it once to record and press it again to stop. This could not have been made any easier for technophobic teachers. After recording, one other obvious button was marked upload. And that’s it.

The lesson went well and many of the teachers seemed somewhat interested in using the camera. Unfortunately, no one rushed up to me to borrow it for the next day. One of the challenges of technologies such as this is that teachers sometimes nod in agreement that it’s a good idea, but their action stops with the nod—they never see its benefit for their own practice.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Uh oh…something else to worry about


So I’m reading A one-eyed look at classroom life: Using new technologies to enrich classroom-based research by Johnson, Sullivan and Williams when one of their research questions hit me like a ton of bricks. In short, they question whether or not what is being recorded via video in a classroom setting has any value because it is not genuine. Because students change from their normal behavior as a reaction to the presence of the camera, how can a teacher accurately gauge how well their instruction was during that session? Although the authors merely suggested the question, I take it a step further. I can imagine little Johnny, normally a demon, putting on his halo because the camera could serve as evidence of his daily behavior. Then there’s little Suzy who usually seeks positive attention but who, today, is waving her hands wildly to answer every question so that she can prove how much of a teacher’s pet she really is. And we can’t forget little Sara who is just starting to break out of her shell and participate in class. Would the camera make her slink back into the shadows and hide?

Thank goodness, then, for The Handbook of Classroom Management. In it, there is a section written by Hickey and Schaffer that suggests that teachers need not worry so much about how student’s react when being filmed—at least after the third or fourth time.  According to these authors, students acclimate quickly to being filmed; thus, while a teacher may not trust the results recorded the first few times, he/she would soon find the children acting true to form.

Phew—dissertation saved.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Possible Framework

If video self-reflection ever becomes mandatory, I believe I have found the way in which it will be implemented. In my current study, teachers have access to Teachscape’s Reflect camera system composed of iPads that are mobile and that have to be set up and taken down. In Kong, Shroff, and Hung’s (2009) scenario, a dual camera system is embedded into the classroom ceiling. One camera will be mounted at the front of the classroom to capture students while another will be mounted at the rear of the classroom to record teacher practice. Sound would be recorded by both a wearable wireless mic as well as a wall-mounted microphone.

Beyond the implications for districts to “peek” into classrooms with such a system, this setup would be just as useful for teachers to self-reflect upon their practice as with the single-camera scheme that Teachscape currently employs. Further, the authors provide three criteria that any such system would need to be useful to teachers:
  • The system should be easily accessible and easy to use without help from others.
  • The system should have a guiding framework to help teachers while they are browsing the video.
  • The system should provide a method through which teachers can build a video library of recorded sessions and teaching experiences to build their knowledge.
Comparing the authors’ ideas with that of the Reflect setup, I am glad to see that these three criteria are built into the system that I will use with teachers. The iPad camera can be set up and ready to record in less than five minutes. The playback and browse functions are easily manipulated. Teachers can quickly and easily create clips and share them publicly or with single users—not to mention there is unlimited capacity for creating and storing video.


One thing lacking, however, is the framework teachers can use to judge their own teaching. Fortunately the authors provide a workable framework that I may consider using to allow teachers to evaluate their teaching quickly via a web-based rubric.
_____________
Reference

Kong, S. C., Shroff, R. H., & Hung, H. K. (2009). A web enabled video system for self reflection      by student teachers using a guiding framework.  Australasian Journal of Educational
    Technology, 25
(4). pp. 554-558.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Case Study: Qualitative Research

As defined by Lunenberg and Irby (2008), qualitative research "emphasizes understanding by closely examining people's words, actions, and records, as opposed to a quantitative research approach that investigates such words, actions, and records at a mathematically significant level" (p. 89).

As I read these chapters on the banks of a lake in Pocahontas, Arkansas, I was reminded again of my distaste for qualitative research.  Over the past few weeks, I have hyped myself up, telling myself that doing a "few" case studies wouldn't be so bad.  And then...BAM...page 151! Leedy reminds me that qualitative data collection "takes a great deal of time."  So I got a little nervous just thinking about the interviews, transcriptions, field notes, and then the analysis of all that data.  The information presented in the chapter served as a great refresher and good reality check.

The case study information from Table 6.1 (Leedy, 2013):

Case Study:

  • Purpose:
    • To understand one person or situation (or perhaps a very small number) in great depth
  • Focus:
    • One case or a few cases within its/their natural setting
  • Methods of Data Collection:
    • Observations
    • Interviews
    • Appropriate written documents and/or audiovisual material
  • Methods of Data Analyses:
    • Categorization and interpretation of data in terms of common themes
    • Synthesis into an overall portrait of the cases(s)
A link to more in-depth information about case studies:  http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/Case_study/casest.htm

Monday, October 7, 2013

Organization

In an attempt to jumpstart the organization that I need to complete this project, I am going to remind myself of a few items:
  • I need to find an online home for my documents.  I have them in my Dropbox account, but I think Mendeley would serve my needs better.  
  • I need to create a list of search terms.  Here are a few that I have used:
    • videotaping
    • video recording
    • digital video recording
    • teacher's reflective practice
    • Reflect camera
  • Some inforamtion to add to my collection:
    • A brief article from Education Week:  Video Recording Your Teaching: VHS vs. 21st Century Technologies
      • Quote:  "At the same time, the power of the technology working seamlessly in the background facilitates this openness for teachers to "break open their classroom doors" to other teachers. Combined with an online community with collaborative and analytical features, these 21st Century teachers are learning at an accelerated rate not previously possible.  This evolution in technology has the potential to be revolutionary."
    • A paper from academia.edu:  Using Video in Science Teacher Education
    • Information from the Teachscape website
      • Transforming Classroom Teaching brochure
      • Danielson's Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument, 2013

Monday, September 30, 2013

Methodology

I love numbers; I love quantitative research.  Science and math...math and science!  My undergraduate degree is in Biology.  I enjoy the technical, scientific writing that comes with that field of work.  To me, those types of studies seem straight-forward; they cover more breadth and provide a greater sense of generalizability.  However, the types of data needed to support the things I have always been interested in are generally off-limits.  Achievement test data, SES data, and student interview data are all types of information that is virtually unavailable to me.

I have had a difficult time understanding how to approach a research project when I don't have access to K-12 teachers and students.  This is what I know, and this is realm I am in.  And I don't have access to pre-service teachers or any online group to use for data collection.

Once I decided to return to the program, I began looking around my "environment" for potential research problems.  I toyed with several ideas related to librarianship, but I never really settled on anything that was noteworthy.  The digital video recording is just gearing up for the year, and seems to be a viable option.

But the nature of the research problem seems to lend itself more towards a qualitative methodology. 
Qualitative...ummm...I don't like that word.  See first paragraph!  And to be honest, I didn't really care for the professor that taught Qualitative Methods.  Qualitative research seems more exploratory, more in-depth. It usually tells a story more than a t-test.  The method that I would choose to use would be a case study. Leedy defines a case study as, "a type of qualitative research in which in-depth data are gathered relative to a single individual, program, or event, for the purpose of learning more about an unknown or poorly understood situation" (p. 100).  

I have been gathering different case studies and thinking about different instrumentation techniques.  I feel like I am just in the beginning stages of how this should all look.  I think I would benefit from discussing my thoughts with a professor! 

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Researching, Reading, and Ranting

Over the past week, I've been knee deep in article gathering--not reading discerningly, per se, but definitely collecting. I must say, I've been able to weed through several that came up through the library search engine and am filling up my dedicated Drop Box folder quite nicely. Now that it's brimming full--about 25 or so--it's time to start buckling down and actually reading the content after the abstracts.

I have had a chance to pour over two of my finds. The first is an article by Katherine Casey titled "Modeling Lessons." I found it in the October 2011 issue of Educational Leadership. Here, Casey makes the argument that "Teachers need to see effective instructional strategies in action before they can make them their own." Part of her suggestion with videotaped lessons is that they be shared among teachers--not just use them merely for reflective practice. This struck me as a good idea; heretofore, I was only looking at videotaping in the classroom as a way for teachers to improve their practice by looking solely at their own recorded lessons. Casey's idea would be yet another way to improve practice within a given school environment because teachers would see effective teaching being done to the same students that they see in their own classes. Thus, if a strategy works in Mrs. Jones' class with John and Jane, then why shouldn't it work in my class with John and Jane?

The next work that caught my eye discusses the hurdles inherent in recording in the classroom ("Taking Video Cameras into the Classroom"  |  Otrel-Cass, Cowie, and Maguire  | Waikato Journal of Education 15(2), 2010. Although this article does not deal directly with teachers using the camera as a tool for reflective practice (it speaks to researchers in general), it does highlight the challenges that school districts would face trying to implement their use:
  • Can participants freely decide whether they want to participate in the recording or not?
  • Do the participants understand how the videotapes will be used?
  • Do the participants have the right to request that the tapes be destroyed after the research is complete?
As I read these, I reflected upon what I know about Shelby County's use of the Teachscape Reflect system. For the first point, parents and students can opt out of being recorded. This can be done for every type of photo or video recording at the beginning of the year or can be done on a case by case basis. For the second, I doubt seriously that students fully understand the use of the video recordings. From my own experience, most students believe that the camera is in the room to catch the bad students in action. For the third point, there is no rule in place regarding this in SCS. Right now, only the teacher has access to the video once it is uploaded to Teachscape. Only he/she can view it or share it out to other Teachscape users. Parents or students could request that videos be destroyed or deleted, but in the end, this would be up to the teacher's discretion.

Again, while this article did not address teacher reflective practice, it was great for highlighting obstacles that I might face when I attempt to do my own action research.

And speaking of obstacles, last week we found out that my school will be turned over to a charter school for failing to make academic gains for the last five years. Thus, with all that this entails for my livelihood, it also means that I may want to start collecting data this year for fear that I will not have access to the Reflect camera system next year.

And I thought having kids had stopped me from getting my Ed.D...

Monday, September 16, 2013

Initial Ramblings

Some background information:
  • I started my career as a science teacher.  I have taught 7th and 8th grade science, physical science biology, and chemistry.
  • I am currently a librarian in an urban middle school
  • I began taking IDT classes in 1999.  Somewhere in the middle of that process, I took library class to get my endorsement in library science.  Towards the end of the initial time limit on my classes, I took a few more hours and actually had my research project approved by the IRB and my school system.
  • Of course, some life events intervened, namely Ellie, Bailey, and Katie.
But, to be honest, I wasn't enthralled with the study that I had proposed.  I wanted to look at the data that we were generating in my school from a program called Study Island.  However, the data flow was inconsistent, and many pertinent parts (gender, socioeconomic status, etc.) were missing.  So, I set that to the side, and let the years pass.  Actually, this summer as I was cleaning and purging, I threw away a big stack of papers that dealt with that study that I been saving all these years.  I had made peace with the fact that my window of opportunity to complete my degree had closed.  I have three children (ages 5, 3, and 2), a labor-intensive job, a long commute back and forth to work, and extracurricular activities with my children. I know...plenty of excuses! But I really was finished thinking about that Ed.D.

Well, I recently received a letter from the University of Memphis, inviting former students to return and complete their degrees.  So, I decided to re-enroll and try to complete my degree.  In the past, trying to determine a research topic on my own contributed to my lack of progress.  And, of course, this led to me dropping out!

When I initially talked with Dr. Lowther about returning, we discussed studying some element of librarianship and technology and gathering data from pre-service librarians.  She suggested that I speak with Dr. Allen and solicit his advice on how to proceed with a study involving pre-service librarians.

While that is still an option, I have decided to go a different route.  I would like to investigate the use of the digital vidoe recordings as a reflective practice for classroom teachers.  Currently, we have the camera system at my school.  My husband is also a librarian in the same district.  He serves as the video coordinator at his school.  In the last few years, there has been a push in our district to use digital video recordings to gather classroom evidence.  At first, the data was utilized by the MET Project to gather base-line data as they worked to construct our new evaluation tool.  Recently, the shift has been to utilize the digital video recordings in place of an actual observer.  But, it is also being marketed as a tool for experienced teachers to use so that they can analyze their own practice in the classroom without the interference of another "body" in the classroom.  He has three teachers that are willing to utilize the equipment and reflect on their practice.  I believe that teachers at my school will also be willing to use the recordings to reflect as well.

So, I described all that background information so that "they" could understand where I am coming from and where I have problems.  Now that I have an initial topic, I need direction on how to refine it and turn it into something that will work for the completion of my degree.  This is where I got stuck last time!