Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative’s Voices in Education Initiative is designed to improve educational practice at all levels; increase community involvement; enhance perception; and serve as a professional’s forum focused on classroom success. Unique, innovative, and positive stories about your school or classroom’s learning community are appropriate for this channel.
We want to uplift public education in our region; act as a catalyst for developing professional learning communities; highlight the exceptional work that happens everyday in our classrooms; and help the general public realize how well our schools are doing. We will showcase quality teachers making a difference in the lives of children and young people on a daily basis.
It is our goal to demonstrate the examples of educational excellence within our region’s classrooms and schools.
Expanding Opportunities
Video in the classroom has evolved since the days when teachers wheeled in film projectors on carts. More teachers and students are using online video-sharing sites than ever before. Video in the classroom is no longer a one-way channel of communication; teachers and students are participating in the creation of videos too. On TeacherTube, educators share material, such as instructional math videos, with classrooms across the mountain and around the world.
Teachers who use such sites value the opportunity to see what other educators are doing in their classrooms, and students say they enjoy having an outlet to showcase their work. “Students have always been on the cutting edge of technology, and now educators are becoming more technologically inclined, so this gives us an opportunity to use a little professional judo and exploit the inevitable” says one east Kentucky Educator, and “using technology sharing gives me a whole new set of tools with which to teach my students and grow professionally.”
Jason Smith, former School Superintendent and founder of TeacherTube, said they wanted to create a place for teachers to model their lessons. “It is allowing teachers from all over the world to share with each other and learn from one another,” he said. “We want to create a grassroots movement in transforming how teachers teach and students learn.”
Adam Smith said several teachers, such as a rapping math teacher from North Carolina, have become the “rock stars” of the site. Videos that incorporate songs, visual aids, and math and science tend to be popular on the site.
Teachers from across the region are sharing educator produced videos used to enhance instruction, and there is a growing trend in their use as tools to increase teacher collaboration and professional growth. A region wide professional learning community is now a possibility.
Our Vision….
We are hoping to use the KVEC Mysite channel to post several different categories of videos that highlight educational excellence in our region. We would like to focus on students, classrooms, special programs, teachers, volunteers, etc. who are a making a positive difference in advancing the quality of education in our schools. We also want to explore how this forum can be used to enhance professional growth and collaboration among educators.
Types of videos may include:
Innovative Educational Programs – Most schools have programs they conduct that are unique to their campus. Examples of those programs include; Peer mentoring, Oral History Projects, Clean Water Surveys, Alcohol Reduction, etc. Those types of programs would be excellent to post to the channel in order to uplift the school and share those successes with other schools across the region. When other district folk see those videos it might encourage them to attempt an innovation and give them a contact person they can speak with.
Strong Curriculum/Powerful Instructional Strategies – Capturing a classroom at work, where the instructor focuses on the appropriate level of rigor, uses strong engaging instructional strategies, and demonstrates high levels of learning. This could occur at any grade level in any subject area and could include actual footage from the classroom as well as interviews with the instructor and students.
Volunteer Programs – Many schools have developed a strong volunteer program that cause community members to be engaged in the classroom. Examples might include Grandparents as Readers, Business leaders as guest speakers, Regular motivational Speakers, etc.
Best Practice Exemplars – We have some of the best teachers in the world in our region. They all do many things extremely well, but most have a few things that they do better than anyone. Videos on the site could highlight an example of a lesson, a writing starter, collaborative learning task, etc. that could be shared so that other teachers could benefit by seeing a “Master” teacher at work. The opportunities for feedback and dialogue are endless and embedded within the instructional day.
School News Productions – Schools that have media programs or news programs are doing a great job sharing their schools information within the school and those districts that can access local cable reach into those homes served by the Cable system. The Mysite Channel will enable folk from around the world to see those stories.