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Important Information for Teacher Credential Candidates Submitting a PACT Teaching Event

The faculty, staff and administration of the College of Education hope that you have a productive and worthwhile experience with the process of developing your PACT Teaching Event. Below are descriptions of some technical resources that the College of Education will provide to facilitate the preparation of your Teaching Event. Please read these descriptions and the accompanying instructions very carefully so that your ability to access these resources is maximized.

Videotaping

In order to capture elements of instruction and student learning, you will need to produce videotapes of high audio and video quality. It is important that the quality of the videotaped activities be sufficient for scorers to understand what happened in your classroom. As a rule of thumb, sound quality is generally more important than video quality, but a well-produced teaching example promotes an overall impression of competence and ability. The following suggestions will help you achieve that goal.

The Buddy System is encouraged: “I’ll shoot for you, if you’ll shoot for me.” Having a Buddy to monitor the equipment takes a lot of stress off the session. Trying to set up and use all this unfamiliar equipment and deliver a cool, even lesson plan is a real challenge.

Think of your lesson presentation as being onstage; it has certain boundaries and lighting; from what angle can you best address the camera and the students? Generally the framing is one shot, without zooms, that shows all of the interactions. When you are shooting, be very safety conscious. Students love to go tripping over extension cords and tripods. Don’t leave equipment unattended.

Light quality is important. The main source of light should be behind the camera operator, illuminating the instructor. Some cameras can adjust for florescent, incandescent or daylight.

Sound is important. For the most part, you will be facing the camera; your students will be facing you. Try to have the camera no more than 20 feet away. Speak clearly and evenly through the lesson. You may want to repeat student questions or statements if they are inaudible. If possible, use an external microphone that can be clipped on to a belt or lapel.

Selecting and Editing Your Video Segment

Select the segment(s) you will use for the Teaching Event. In most cases this will be two 10 minute segments (Single Subject) or one 15 minute segment (Multiple Subject).

Compressing video clips for TaskStream. Compress each video clip to 100 MB or less. See the tutorial that walks you through the necessary steps for Apple or PC.

PACT Lab Support. If you are attending a PACT support lab session to compress your video clips your segments must be identified before coming to the session! The lab sessions will use Apple Computers to help you compress your videos, but the compressed clips will be viewable on Apple or PC

Instructions can be found on the Resources page

Cameras

The College of Education has two kinds of video cameras available for checkout:

  1. MiniDV. This type uses MiniDV videotapes. You can buy a package of three 60-minute tapes at BestBuy or most drugstores. TDK or Maxell are fine brands. The advantage of this type of camera is you can save the video session on the tape, and thus have a copy after returning the tape.

  2. Non-tape digital video camera. The advantage of this type of camera is that no tapes are necessary but the disadvantage is that you will not have your video session saved on tape. However, if you know how to download the video onto your hard drive and/or plan to edit your video immediately after taping, this is a good option.

Using your own video camera

You CAN use your own digital camera but to get lab support these should use the mini dv 1 tape or be digitally saved on a flash drive or portable USB hard drive. But if you are comfortable with what you are doing, you may not need lab support. Bottom line is that you must be able to compress your videos to 100 MB to upload to TaskStream. See the document “Compressing Video for TaskStream”.