I need digital video footage of real K-12 teaching for an online program

February 13, 2014 10:37 AM

I know that a lot of things have changed since I asked a similar question several years ago, including the parameters of the project.

So here's the similar question from about five years ago that yielded nothing.

Here's what I need in 2014:

*Real instruction showing instructors teaching in actual classrooms, teaching actual lessons. (Unvarnished, unrehearsed, warts-and-all would be ideal)

*Good video and audio quality

*Video we would be able to excerpt (i.e. we wouldn't have to use the entire lesson--we could just use a portion)

This is for a series of online courses for new teachers and will form the core of several classes, so all grade levels and subjects would be useful.

As before, free videos would be great, but we're also willing to pay to use good footage. Thanks for any help you all can give!

(Please also note that YouTube videos would only work if they're of teaching where the people posting the videos have gotten the appropriate permissions before posting them--I don't want to even touch videos that have been made and posted without proper authorization.)

posted by yellowcandy to Education (8 answers total)

I really doubt you are going to find this. With minor children in classrooms, any releases for videography would assuredly be limited to the original use, not for later sale or re-use in your project. Moreover, if I'm a teacher, I'm not going to want my "warts-and-all" instruction to be the basis of your educational video.

You don't save any time or effort by relying on someone else here, as you will have to ensure you have the clearances to use the footage. Just shoot it yourself. Presumably if this is part of an online program for teachers, you should have contacts who are teachers who can participate.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:52 AM on February 13, 2014

My masters program (M.Ed) used videos from the Responsive Classroom series to show us instruction and behavior management techniques. I agree that it will be difficult for you to get raw footage of this kind because of privacy restrictions. Perhaps you and your team should make videos yourselves by asking the teachers you partner with to record their teaching and then you can have an ongoing class set of instruction videos for teachers in training.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:59 AM on February 13, 2014

Response by poster: Just for clarity: This kind of thing exists in other countries. And I'm not necessarily looking for videos that John or Julie Doe put up online of their teaching. I'm looking more for institutional or corporate archives of videos that are designed to be used to train or do PD for teachers.
posted by yellowcandy at 11:03 AM on February 13, 2014

These really don't exist in the US because of privacy laws. None of the teacher training programs I've worked with have ever had access to anything other than what they got permission to shoot themselves. The Responsive Classroom videos are about as close as you can get to professional videos. The only other option you could look into is using the Reading Rockets videos that showcase teaching kids to read, but you'd likely have to license those if you plan to refer to them in an online course. Could you approach your state's teaching commission to see if they have any videos that might work for your needs?
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 11:08 AM on February 13, 2014

I'm looking more for institutional or corporate archives of videos that are designed to be used to train or do PD for teachers.

Understood; you're just not going to get permission to use them in your project because of the way the releases are written when working with kids. The releases do not allow derivative uses such that you can come in and license the footage for your project. And, again, you are going to have to confirm that you have the requisite clearances, so you're not saving yourself a legal undertaking. If this is for a course, talk to the university's GC to get them on board with what you're going to need.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:20 AM on February 13, 2014

Response by poster: Admiral Haddock: Our legal team has been on board with this for a long time. I'm not looking to shortcut any legal processes.

I just want to identify resources that we can try to license for use in courses.
posted by yellowcandy at 11:55 AM on February 13, 2014

I have a project where a colleague and I post a video from every instructional day in our HS English classes. We have photo releases on all students, and post our videos publicly on YouTube. Email me if that sounds like something you could use (my gmail is the same as my name here, at gmail dot com).
posted by guster4lovers at 12:24 PM on February 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Well, as it turns out, this actually *does* exist--in almost exactly the configuration I described in my question.

A company called Teachscape sells access to a huge archive of teaching videos from real classrooms--with visible students and all.

Thanks, everyone for your help though.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:20 AM on March 24, 2014