OTAN News
Using Technology to Improve Teaching
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
In the last year, we have discovered all kinds of ways to use technology for administrative and instructional practices at our adult education agencies that we did not think were possible or had previously dismissed as impractical, too expensive, or too difficult to figure out. One of those possibilities is using technology to review classroom teaching and provide instructional coaching, as well as thinking about how to integrate video into teacher professional development. In his article 3 ways to prioritize teacher PD as schools reopen, Adam Geller offers these items to consider when looking to improve the level of instruction across the school.
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Video observations – Teachers have done so much online instruction in the past year that it is no longer strange to watch a video of a teacher working with students online. These videos can serve as the foundation for video observation and coaching, and administrators working with teachers and providing feedback can happen either synchronously or asynchronously. Technology can now be used to provide feedback quickly and easily and more “just-in-time.”
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Video libraries – With so much video of classroom instruction now available, consider curating teaching “best practices” and new teaching methods that can be organized into a video library. This kind of resource can be invaluable for our adult education teachers who work at all times of the day and in different locations and can be hard to get together as a group.
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Video learning – There are so many videos and webinar recordings that can be used in teacher professional development activities that now is the time to consider how to integrate this video learning into ongoing teacher professional growth. An intriguing facet of this video learning is that we can use video from experts in the field at a fraction of the cost – no need any longer to contract with these experts to come in-person when so much of their knowledge and expertise is online.
Consider the power of video to enhance post-pandemic professional development!