Filmed lesson observations help train the next generation of teachers

With social distancing measures in place, how do we guarantee the safety of students and staff whilst enabling trainee teachers to observe lessons?

Observing lessons is a fundamentally important aspect of teacher training. The question is, how do we enable observations whilst guaranteeing the safely of your students, pupils and other adults in the classroom?

Social distancing guidelines and precautions make it is extremely difficult to justify having additional adults in the classroom, even when schools re-open. With the overwhelming uncertainty of what the next months and even years will bring, this is not a problem that can be taken lightly.

So where does that leave our next generation of teachers whose training replies on being able to watch other more experienced teachers in the classroom in order to learn from them?

The next best thing to a live observation is watching pre-recorded lessons.

Fortunately a company based in Cambridge called Mediamerge has been filming in classrooms across the UK for the past decade, creating an extensive bank of real classroom practice.

"The videos are excellent for training because…. They give real life perspective of sessions which can be used again and again. Sessions can be broken down to component parts and analysed in detail. They present a flexible and well produced training resource.”
Mat Scott, teaching and learning development leader

Today, there are over 100 lessons to choose from, spanning primary through to further education. Lessons have been used for staff CPD, teacher training and recruitment by over 3000 schools, UCL’s Institute of Education, Edge Hill University, Ofsted and many more.

Since lockdown, there has been a surge of enquiries from teacher training providers in particular, requiring access for all of their students. In response, Mediamerge have established an platform allowing subscribers to stream lessons and access supporting materials online.

To find out more visit www.videolearning.co.uk, email info@mediamerge.co.uk or call +44-0-1223 750705.

Mediamerge Limited
Orwell House, Cowley Road, Orwell House, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB5 8QL
email: info@mediamerge.co.uk
Tel +44-0-1223 750705.
Andrej Dethlefsen

Mediamerge is a company based in Cambridge and established in 2008. The company started as a video production house, creating advertising and training materials for large education clients such as Tribal, BBC Bitesize and UFI (University for Industry).
In 2011 Mediamerge filmed and released their first collection of lesson observations, officially entering the world of publishing.

They quickly gained a reputation for their attention to detail and ability to film the ‘evidence’ required to judge the quality of teaching and learning. Additionally, they engaged an education consultant to write Ofsted-based feedback so schools could benchmark the quality of their own lessons against the filmed ones.

These observations have been distributed on DVD and purchased by organisations in the UK and across the world. Extracts of lessons are available via their YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/classroomobservation) and have gained over 1.6 million views to date.

Mediamerge has now launched www.videolearning.co.uk allowing subscribers to stream lessons and access supporting materials online.

This release was published on openPR.