Many initiatives have recognized the fact that there is a need to support educators for betterment of students’ education. In this article, we’ve come up with the information about “Smarter Cookie”, a San Francisco based initiative dedicated to support teachers more frequently and meaningfully. Let’s learn about it.
SmarterCookie is an online video coaching platform that helps teachers improve their practice in the classroom. They provide administrators with resources and tools that support their teachers handle the complicated parts of video upload, storage, and private sharing. It also enables teachers to take control of their own professional development. Let’s see how it actually works!
Once you have registered an account and log in to it, all is set for you to upload your video.
Basic functionality of SmarterCookie is carried over by three steps: Record, Share & Improve.
Record & Upload : Record a short video of a lesson with any video recording device such as a camera, mobile or a computer.
Once you’ve recorded the video, upload it by logging into your account. If the video file is large, it may take a few more minutes.
Share:
At the bottom of the window, you can see an option to enter mail ids. As all videos are private, SmarterCookie allows you to choose who can view your videos. After uploading and entering viewers mail ids, hit “send to SmarterCookie”.
Improve:
Before sending your video to viewers, SmarterCookie asks you to enter video details namely Title/Lesson subject, lesson objectives and focus areas for feedback. The last detail is about what do you want feedback on. You can get feedbacks from your students, colleagues and other experts who watch your video. This helps you review their feedbacks and take immediate actions to improve your skills.
This is how SmarterCookie works. We recommend educators to use SmarterCookie in a few more applications. Let’s learn about them quickly.
Flip Your Classroom:
Flipped Classroom model is a new technical approach where lessons are watched at home and assignments, homeworks and projects are done in the classroom in the presence of a teacher. Teachers can easily flip their classroom using SmarterCookie. Students watch these videos at home, give feedbacks from home and clarify their doubts in the classroom. In this model, teachers take the role of a facilitator to enhance students’ learning.
Design Personalized Instructions:
As you receive feedbacks from your students online, you can review them to know how students learn. Once you’ve reviewed their feedback, you’ll have a clear idea to deliver personalized instructions before entering your classroom.
Professional Development:
SmarterCookie not only helps teachers in delivering their lessons but also in their professional development. Let’s learn how.
It allows teachers to collaborate with their colleagues and get inspired by other teachers’ videos,
It enables coaches and mentors to support teachers more meaningfully and frequently by sharing exemplar videos with them.
It helps administrators and decision makers of schools and districts to effectively manage teachers’ professional learning.
SmarterCookie’s resource library covers many topics to make you clearly understand its features. We’d like to mention about its article about meaningful feedback. It explains about some important pointers to keep in mind while giving feedback to colleagues. We hope this information is useful for you to know about this great online video-sharing platform. We’d like to know more platforms like this. If you know a few more, feel free to share with us in the comment box.
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