The Edthena video observation platform enables teachers and coaches to participate in collaborative professional learning.
Coaches and colleagues can easily provide feedback, aligned to the school’s or district’s learning standards and priorities, to teachers on their instruction. Reports and graphs about teachers’ learning goals help identify trends across departments or an entire district, determine if professional development is improving teaching practices, and provide a basis for ongoing dialogue about instructional best practices.
Schools, districts, and teacher education programs in more than 30 states are using the award-winning platform to make video observation an integral part of teacher induction, teacher mentoring, professional learning communities (PLCs), and peer observation.
Formats/platforms used:
The Edthena web app runs on any device with a modern web browser. Edthena also has dedicated ways to upload video from all major device platforms found in schools – Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Chrome OS.
Primary website URL:
Problem Solved:
Edthena makes video-based coaching, teacher-to-teacher collaboration, and professional learning easy for any school or district. It does so by enabling classroom observation to occur virtually at times convenient for teachers and coaches. This eliminates the need for in-person, sit-and-get professional learning days, as well as the need for coaches to spend valuable time traveling site to site to observe teachers.
Edthena also provides the ability to scale best practices across a district with secure video libraries, makes it easy for districts to get started with micro-credentials, and more.
Grade/age range:
Edthena is used by K-12 teachers, coaches, and administrators, as well as pre-service teachers.
Core/supplemental/special needs/extracurricular/or professional development?
Professional development
Subject/topics:
Districts can use Edthena to support high-impact teaching and help streamline feedback to teachers, regardless of what subject they teach. For example, one Texas district uses Edthena to support new teacher mentoring, a district in Connecticut uses Edthena to ensure instructional coaches across the district build a shared professional vision, and another district in Colorado uses Edthena to train and certify teachers on a specialized elementary reading pedagogical method.
Within the Edthena platform, schools and districts can also align to their associated professional frameworks and standards to help guide the professional learning process.
Lesson time needed:
Teachers can use Edthena to record video of their teaching practice for any amount of lesson or instructional time. They can then reflect on those videos when convenient, for self-evaluations, PLC meetings, or coaching sessions.
Pricing model:
The Edthena platform is priced on a per teacher basis, per school, or whole-district.
Edthena recently launched a $1.5-million Innovation Fund to support districts in creating and sustaining a next-generation professional learning system. With the fund, districts are able to implement the Edthena platform for up to three academic years.
To learn more about Edthena’s Innovation Fund and the application process, visit https://blog.edthena.com/2021innovationfund.
Additional services:
All Edthena users have access to a diverse set of support resources, including step-by-step instructions and how-to videos for using the platform. Edthena even offers a collection of best practices for implementing video coaching developed through its experience working with schools across the country.
Additionally, organizations using Edthena work with an expert on the Edthena team who ensures their success. This ranges from goal-setting around a successful implementation to accessing train-the-trainer type materials for use internally.
What makes Edthena unique?
Edthena is unique in that it provides a complete, yet simple, solution for teacher growth by leveraging classroom videos of teachers’ actual instruction. With Edthena, teachers and coaches are also presented with a unique opportunity to engage in truly interactive collaboration while working asynchronously.
Characteristics:
Edthena streamlines the use of video observation to help teachers improve their teaching practice. This starts with enabling teachers to reliably upload videos of their teaching to the Edthena platform using any device. Once the video is uploaded, teachers can share it with coaches and colleagues who provide timestamped comments categorized as questions, suggestions, strengths, and notes.
The intuitive interface then enables teachers and coaches to participate in collaborative, data-driven professional learning cycles using the platform’s robust report and graphs.
Here’s what users are saying:
“Our use of Edthena fosters intentional opportunities for teachers to self-reflect, receive coaching, and ask each other questions about their practice all in one place. The best part of using video is that teachers don’t have to miss out on time with their students in order to see their peers’ instruction. They are able to go back and watch the video at any point in their day. And, they are able to build their own library of practice so that they can see their own transformation throughout the year.”
–Courtney Groskin and Violet Christensen, Learning Coaches at St. Vrain Valley Schools in Longmont, Colorado
“We envisioned creating an ever-growing network of excellent teachers… We quickly realized we needed a platform in which to house the videos and the dialogue between teachers. Edthena [helped] meet this need.”
–Valerie Minor, Coordinator of Professional Development and Mentoring Services, and Suzanne McGahey, K-12 Social Studies Coordinator, at Keller Independent School District in Keller, Texas
