Be Specific About the Use Case

Dr. Michael Moody is the Founder of Insight ADVANCE (insightadvance.com), an edtech company whose mission is to connect self-reflection, coaching and peer collaboration, observation, and evaluation in one place to permanently impact how all educators involved in teacher growth are supported. He is also co-founder and former CEO of Insight Education Group (insighteducationgroup.com), a national education consulting company that has supported schools, districts and states with the implementation of large-scale teacher effectiveness and instructional improvement initiatives since 2000.

Dr. Moody’s experiences as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, school leader, district administrator and consultant have provided him with the foundation necessary to understand first-hand the needs of students and educators. With successes spanning from the implementation of nationwide professional development programs to serving as chief academic advisor in DC Public Schools, Moody has supported numerous school, district and state leaders in the development and implementation of initiatives to increase educator growth. A guiding principle in all of Moody’s work is to create effective instructional programs capable of providing each and every student with equal access to a quality education. This standard continues to inspire the progress and transformation he seeks to bring about through educational technology. He tweets at @DrMichaelMoody.

What are the key considerations for using video to improve feedback?

Michael: I have two tips. Number one think really specifically about the use case. What is in the first month, what is the one, two things we really expects to happen? Do we want a teacher to do one video on a self-reflection, and do we want them to do one peer-to-peer observation and give a round a feedback? Think really specifically about the nuts and bolts because they matter.

And teachers don't intuitively--or kind of given how--I don’t want to say how hard, but how much work is involved in just teaching. We tend to focus as teachers on just getting the work done and so I think you've got to help teachers understand what the starting point is. I think we've got to give space for that to happen and for it to not feel great right away right. So it's going to be a little messy. I think acknowledging the messiness and kind of embracing it and working through it is important.

And I think the other thing too is don't forget to think about what type of support the support providers are going to need in order to do the work well, because even if we work through the logistics and teachers are on board and it feels good to them, as soon as they start to get feedback that doesn't feel right or it's from someone who doesn't give them the type of feedback they're expecting to get or it's not that helpful. The rest of the process doesn't matter so it doesn't matter how slick the video is or you know how easy the platform is to use if the feedback is not impactful for that teacher then there's no point in engaging in the process. I think we've got to be very deliberate about the content of the work and who's providing the support and how they're providing support in an effort to make sure that the process feels productive.