Draft:EdTPA video component
About This Article
This article describes the process of recording and submitting teaching videos to the edTPA website. It is intended for students in the College of Education.
About edTPA
edTPA is a performance-based, subject-specific assessment and support system used by teacher preparation programs throughout the United States to emphasize, measure and support the skills and knowledge that all teachers need from Day 1 in the classroom. For each handbook field, the placement is a Pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade classroom. edTPA is a subject-specific assessment that includes versions for 27 teaching fields. The assessment features a common architecture focused on three tasks: Planning, Instruction, and Assessment.
Aspiring teachers must prepare a portfolio of materials during their student teaching clinical experience. edTPA requires aspiring teachers to demonstrate readiness to teach through lesson plans designed to support their students' strengths and needs; engage real students in ambitious learning; analyze whether their students are learning, and adjust their instruction to become more effective. Teacher candidates submit unedited video recordings of themselves at work in a real classroom as part of a portfolio that is scored by highly trained educators. edTPA builds on decades of teacher performance assessment development and research regarding teaching skills and practices that improve student learning.
From edTPA website.
Recording your video
Selecting a camera
You can use any camera you like, as long as there is a way to upload the raw video from the camera to your laptop. That includes your personal phone or tablet.
Tech Support has a supply of iPad Minis and tripods that can be checked out for student use. The iPad Mini satisfies the camera requirement and does a very nice job of recording.
Recording
You will get the best quality recording using a tripod to hold your camera.
If you are using a phone or tablet, record using the default camera application.
Readying your video for submission
Upload the raw video to your laptop
If you used your personal phone or tablet to record your video, upload your video to your laptop just like you upload other videos or photos.
If you are using an iPad Mini from Tech Support or an iOS device of your own, here are instructions on on transferring photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a Mac or PC.
Trim the video
The only edits you are allowed to make to the video is trimming the start of the video and the end of the video. There are almost always some seconds worth of video recorded between the time you press Record and you are ready to begin. Likewise, there is always some video of you walking to the camera after you finish to press Stop. This is your chance to remove those parts of the recording. No other edits are allowed.
If you are on a Mac, you can use iMovie to trim the head and tail. There are instructions on how to trim video here.
If you are on a Windows machine, you can trim your video in the Photos application. There are instructions on trimming with Photos here.
Compress the video
There is a 500MB size limit on the final video. If your video is under 500MB, you do not have to compress and you can skip this step.
If your video is over 500MB, use Handbrake to compress it. You can download Handbrake from their website. Once it is installed, follow these steps:
- Open the Handbrake application.
- Handbrake will open with a browse window. Find your video and open it.
- Tell Handbrake where to store your finished video. There is a Browse button at the bottom of the application to specify the destination.
- Press the Start button in the navigation bar. Compression will begin.
- When compression finishes (there is a progress bar in the application), the finished video will be stored on your laptop in the destination you specified.
Uploading to edTPA website
Once your video is trimmed and compressed, it is ready for upload to edTPA.
If you have never registered with edTPA, go to the edTPA website and register. Right below the big image is a series of three boxes with links in them. In the Candidates box, click the Register now link to create a userid.
There is an instructional video from edTPA that describes the steps in submitting files and videos to the website. You can view that video here. Additional information on the upload process and the edTPA experience is available at Prepare: Online Learning for Pearson ePortfolio Users.
Note: The edTPA website requires Flash for its interface and videos. If you are prompted to install Flash as you traverse the website, follow the steps to do the install.