The potential applications for high quality multimedia representations of teaching (so called “MRTs”) seem too numerous to list, as so much of teaching and learning involves complex cognitive, social and pedagogical interactions that require more than passing observation to be fully understood.  Nonetheless, here goes:

1. 1.MRTs are critical to the professional practice of  “coaching” teachers.  If one assumes that no coach (no matter how talented) can effectively model every instructional strategy in every content area at every grade level, then it stands to reason (and it is our experience) that MRTs can scaffold the work of a good coach, making him/her more effective at meeting the needs of more teachers. Put simply, web-based MRTs offer tremendous potential as supporting materials for instructional leaders who struggle to support large numbers of teachers around an array of instructional challenges;
   

2. 2.To the degree that one believes that all teacher preparation programs and graduate degree programs in education should focus on the attributes of high quality instruction, MRTs are essential to the mission of teacher preparation and graduate work in education;
   

3. 3.Teachers themselves, whether new or experienced, desperately need access to MRTs to focus their professional dialogue with their instructional leaders and peers on the complex qualities of effective instruction;
   

4. 4.Principals, district administrators and school board members need MRTs to help facilitate a transition of their professional energy, work and conversation from the administrivia of running schools (which seems to preoccupy their lives) to a more focused effort to understand how to promulgate high quality instruction across all classrooms so that all children can learn;
   

5. 5.Politicians, policy makers and education journalists need access to MRTs to better understand the policies that will help support high quality instruction.
   

6. 6.Parents need access to MRTs to become better consumers of education services, and to better understand how to support their children’s learning.
   

Each of these examples deserves a bit more explanation, but I sincerely believe that MRTs are essential supporting materials to all of the actors that directly and indirectly impact K-12 education. 

As to the distinctive features of MRTs, I think they are as follows:

1. 1.The classroom practice featured in the MRT must be authentic (not staged, rehearsed or coached in advance);
   

2. 2.The classroom instructor should be effective (promulgating really awful classroom practice has little value), but not “paradigms of perfection;”
   

3. 3.MRTs should include classroom teachers’ explanation (preferably in their own voice) of what they were trying to do in the featured lesson; how they panned for the lesson we saw; what key decisions they made in the midst of the lesson that caused them to “change their plan,” and what worked or did not;
   

4. 4.The MRT should include some link (either through expert commentary or text) to a research base that affirms why the teaching in the MRT reflects strategies “known” to be (or “believed” to be) effective;
   

5. 5.MRTs should include more than one “teaching example” of the same or similar lesson – I believe comparative video analysis is more powerful for learning.
   

6. 6.MRTs should provide additional resources that support the “context” for the teaching that the observer is observing.  The viewer should know something about the profile of the learners; the curriculum and context for the lesson;  how the teacher would assess for learning what she has just taught etc…
   

7. 7.MRTs should allow for edited and unedited views of the same practice.  Teacher time being the precious commodity that it is requires that the MRT should presented edited views of the teaching in the classroom.  However should have the opportunity to “get behind the edits” to see what happened when the camera cut away from the scene.  The reasons for this are self-evident;
   

8. 8.Too many MRT focus solely on the “teaching” and not enough on the “learning” that occurs in the classroom.  MRT producers should take a cue from great documentary filmmaking, and insist on longitudinal video capture of classroom instruction.  Over long periods of time, the videographer can capture the learning needs of individual students, thus allowing the editor of the video to create scenes where the viewer experiences the classroom instruction from the perspective of the learner, not just the teacher.  So for example one could “see” the lesson from three distinct “focus students.” With respect to this point of perspective, new technologies such as “Diver” would allow for multiple perspectives on the same classroom instruction.
   

We should be sensitive to the misuse of MRTs, but in my experience the risk we face that is greater than misuse is irrelevance.  I worry that unless we scaffold instructional leaders with the proper guidance and support to use these powerful learning objects effectively, MRTs will become a quaint sub-culture of the ed reform movement and not a core component of a ubiquitous instructional support system across K-12.