When I think back to how I was trained as a teacher in the late 80's, I recall the powerful experience of being videotaped by my mentor and of viewing myself for the first time in utter fascination and mild horror. There is nothing quite like seeing on screen your tennis stroke,

the inside of your mouth, or your classroom practice revealed. I still have that darn video. Did this ever catch on as a significant tool for teacher training?

Twenty years have passed since being trained as a teacher, and I now find myself in a lead role with the WestEd Interactive team, managing web projects that consistently involve multimedia representations of educational practices - not primarily for the sake of teacher preparation -  but for the dissemination of promising pedagogies. One interesting challenge we face is how, when and to what degree to put the production of DRTs (loosely defined) in the hands of teachers.

One example of how we've attempted a teacher-driven production process is in the Envision Schools Project Exchange. The Project Exchange and its related Design Studio are online tools to support the sharing of great projects across the Envision network and beyond in a format that makes each project compelling, accessible, and replicable.  Each project consists of video interview with a lead teacher, digital representations of student work, labeling by standards, outcomes, and keywords, and modular presentations of all project activities and major assessments including downloadable handouts. Although the tool is still relatively new, we have seen meaningful reflection as teachers enter existing projects into the Project Exchange and create new ones in the Design Studio. The tool will be used eventually to deliver the project to students. A sample project is here: http://www.envisionprojects.org/cs/envision/view/env_p/30

In our Doing What Works project (funded by the US Department of Education) we present research-based promising practices using a wide variety multimedia strategies. One specific way we've chosen to represent teacher practices is a slideshow that combines photos of the classroom with audio accompaniment. Here's an example of a slideshow of how a sixth-grade math teacher praises students and corrects misunderstandings using prescriptive, informational feedback in a math class: http://dwwsandbox.littleplanetlearning.com/see/see_slideshow.cfm?fID=411&PA_ID=8&T_ID=18&P_ID=35&cID=18

We are intrigued by the merits (cost and user experience) of pairing still imagery with audio as compared to video treatments.