Viz @ ISTE

The ISTE 2014 educational conference, with over 16,000 educators and thousands more vendors in attendance, was remarkable. Let’s zoom in on some of the document camera developments in the exhibit hall. 

Document camera manufacturers and vendors were back in force this year, after a slight dip in presence last year. Checking in with each booth, I found no breakthrough features being touted at this time. But that's a good thing. See my previous post, Improve This!, to find out why. Some of the new offerings are shown below, although not all. 

Still, document camera exhibitors continue to make the same mistakes and need to address these issues in order to be more successful in reaching schools:

• learn how to speak in the language of the educator
• don't just show the visualizer--show how to teach with it
• develop training programs behind your offerings

What's Missing?

The more I work with teachers in my graduate classes who have document cameras, the more I find that they really want to use document cameras more effectively than they do now. So what's missing here?

Transformative training, that's what!

Although it is certainly true that teachers rarely take advantage of some of the best and most powerful instructional features of these tools, the real key is using these powerful tools differently--doing new things--not just automating old practices. My national workshop "Powerful Visual Teaching and Learning with the Classroom Document Camera" is an example of what is desperately

needed. What matters is using richly visual teaching strategies, transformative student-involvement strategies, and fresh ideas. Those are the pillars of my workshop. If your school, organization, or company is interesting in leveraging these strategies and insights, please contact me. I am available to travel and present in your community, if interested.

Train Me!

Although document cameras are easy to use, it is rare that teachers take advantage of some of the best and most powerful instructional features of these tools. One resource that many educators are unaware of is the training video library for your manufacturer’s document camera

Check these out (shown in alphabetical order):

       Elmo

       Hovercam

       Ken-A-Vision

Lumens Recordex

I am willing link to the training libraries of any vendor that contacts me, so manufacturers should never feel that I am playing favorites. Just send me your links to add here. For now, these are the only ones I could find.