Teachscape Increases Video Recording Options and Adds Video Clipping Functionality to its Reflect Video Platform
New features and new Mini Camera Kit expand the use of classroom video for professional learning communities and classroom observation
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To expand the usability and flexibility of its Reflect Video platform, Teachscape, the leader in delivering Web-based professional learning content, innovative technologies, and expert services to improve teaching practice, has added the ability to upload video from most video-recording devices, including its new Mini Camera Kit, and to clip and share video examples of best teaching practices. These new features, along with Reflect's existing functionalities, facilitate collaboration among educators and provide a video-based tool for the observation and evaluation of teaching practices, all within a secure online platform.
"With Teachscape Reflect Video, educators and administrators get an incredibly powerful picture of teaching practice and can use our embedded tools for collaboration and feedback," said Mark Atkinson, founder and chief strategist of Teachscape. "And with today's announcement, customers can now upload video from most video-recording devices and can control how much of a lesson to share. These new features allow districts to use video more pervasively with professional learning communities, coaching, teacher evaluations, and teacher preparation programs."
Teachscape Reflect Video expands the use of the platform from solely using Teachscape's Lucy Pano Camera Kit to include most video-recording devices, including Teachscape's new Mini Camera Kit. The kit is a low-cost, non-intrusive video recording system that includes a wide-angle lens attached to an optional iPod Touch, a condenser microphone, and an adjustable, lightweight tabletop tripod to provide educators with a compact, portable and professional-grade solution for video capture.
The new clipping feature allows educators to save a clip of specific teaching moments or sections of best practices in action. Teachscape Reflect Video includes the same tagging, commenting and sharing found in the original Reflect platform. With these clips, educators and schools or districts can build a personalized video library of best practices. In addition, it allows educators to collaborate with colleagues on lesson planning and receive more effective feedback on teaching practices.
The system's robust and powerful reporting tools allow administrators to create usage, observation and participation reports that track number of videos captured, comments, shared videos, and more thus allowing them to easily measure teaching progress, deliver data-driven feedback on instructional practices and guide individual teacher growth anchored in a common definition of teacher effectiveness.
When Teachscape Reflect Video is combined with other Teachscape evaluation and observation products– the Framework for Teaching Proficiency System, Teachscape Reflect Live and Teachscape Walk – it creates a comprehensive set of tools that support professional growth, strengthen teaching practice, and provide a platform for scalable, systematic and consistent evaluations.
To learn more about Teachscape Reflect Video, visit http://www.teachscape.com/reflectvideo/.
About Teachscape
Teachscape uniquely combines innovative technology, engaging content and expert services to develop great teachers. From its Classroom Walkthrough technology, to its powerful web-based content delivery platform, to its online masters programs, Teachscape's award-winning products and services have been inspired by its dedication to sparking transformative change in teaching practice. Since 1999, Teachscape has worked with schools and school districts, charter networks, archdioceses, universities and state education departments to measurably and continuously improve the effectiveness of teachers and instructional leaders to produce gains in student achievement. Teachscape's partners include Charlotte Danielson, ETS, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford University, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Kogeto to help shape its vision, its products, and its strategies. To learn more about Teachscape and its complete collection of professional development offerings, go to http://www.teachscape.com.
SOURCE Teachscape
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