Since the Great Teaching Toolkit was released in September 2021, its aim has been to provide teachers with high-quality feedback, training and tools in the areas that underpin great teaching in the classroom. Ultimately, it seeks to guide evidence-based, sustained and sustainable professional development in schools and colleges. More than 10,000 licences have been taken up since then in schools and colleges around the world.
Our team of GTT Advisors have been listening to feedback from teachers and leaders in their regular conversations. In this series of blog posts, weโll explore what feedback weโve received, what developments and additions are coming soon, and how they will help you and your colleagues.
You said…
Weโd love to be able to use the GTT to improve how we do observations in school. We think the Model for Great Teaching is very helpful for informing our pedagogical framework, but is there a more structured way we can use it to support peer observation and professional development?
… And what’s coming next
Weโre really excited to announce that we have officially partnered with the team at VEO, an organisation doing brilliant things from the north-east of England. Through this partnership, you can now access easy-to-use video observation functionality based on the Model for Great Teaching. It is included in all paid GTT plans.
The video observation feature is another way you can bring the GTT to life in your classroom โ another tool in your school or collegeโs professional development toolkit. Each teacher using the GTT can record snippets of themselves teaching, with nothing more than a smartphone or iPad.
Once recorded and saved in the โMy Videosโ area, any snippets will remain private to the teacher in question. From there, they can be shared, perhaps with a Head of Department, observer or coach, or with a team โ a professional learning community, working together on a certain Dimension or Element of the Model for Great Teaching.
From there, the teacher and their trusted colleagues will be able to watch, tag and comment on the video, working particularly on one Dimension or Element at a time.
You and your team will be able to use this to facilitate low-stakes but high-impact conversations around strengths, areas for improvement, and strategies to try in the classroom.
How do I access this?
If your school or college already has a subscription, you can access the video observation tool, powered by VEO, by clicking the relevant button on the menu within the Toolkit.
If not, you can find out more and sign up here, to benefit from this and all of the other CPD in the Great Teaching Toolkit, or contact us to arrange a demo.
Read more about other new and upcoming features in the following posts:
- The GTT Community
- Improved support to help guide implementation in your context
[…] Our video observation tool, in partnership with VEO […]
[…] Video observation tools are another feature of the Great Teaching Toolkit that can help facilitate collaboration, bringing colleagues together to develop and reflect on a bank of examples of instructional approaches. Such tools can also help save time by reducing (but not replacing) in-person lesson observation. […]