7. Do It Yourself!
Digital video cameras are relatively cheap and very easy to use. Editing footage using MovieMaker (PC) or iMovie (Mac) is fairly straightforward.
Some schools are now equipped with observation rooms, complete with built-in cameras and a range of other gadgetry. My very strong advice would be not to use them. The benefits of filming in usual classrooms – the places where teachers and their students are used to having their English lessons – far outweigh the disadvantages, particularly when the objective is to provide a record of something that is as close as possible to normal practice. (School students will, of course, behave differently in the presence of a video camera – but it is surprising how little notice they take of it, particularly if it is mounted on a tripod in a corner of the classroom.)
Several years ago, two of my colleagues at the Institute of Education, Anton Franks and Caroline Daly, filmed lessons taught by three of our English PGCE students and one experienced teacher. The DVD which they produced has proved an invaluable resource for us.
We show very short clips – usually the beginnings and endings of the lessons – to our student teachers in one of the sessions before the start of their school placements. Here our focus is on lesson observation and the DV footage is used to develop in our student teachers the skills of focused observation. Before showing the footage, we ask the student teachers to read transcripts of the first few minutes of each lesson and talk about the transcript as evidence of what was happening in the lesson. Then we show the clips and engage students in discussion about what they have observed.
A few weeks later, when the student teachers are just starting to make their first tentative steps towards teaching whole classes, we return to the DVD. This time our focus is on classroom management and on language. We generally show the last few minutes of the lessons, again as a way of generating discussion among the student teachers. We show the same sections twice, the first time concentrating on the language that is used and the second time looking at classroom management.
For one of the lessons that had been filmed, we provide our student teachers with a copy of the lesson plan and invite them to compare the plan with the lesson that they have observed. We direct their attention towards the objectives that had been made explicit in the plan and ask them to consider to what extent these objectives would appear to have been realised in the lesson.
There are specific advantages for student teachers in having the opportunity to observe the practice of other student teachers.
 
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