Concept: create a tool that can help school leaders run schools better. The problem with this is that there's way too much that could be done, so they narrowed their focus a bit to teacher evaluation.
Four stages/phases of the game:
1) Observation (done)
2) Argument Construction (just now under development) - reporting back on what was observed
3) Expert Analysis - kind of like John Madden play-by-play reporting
4) Conference
The game/tool is being created with Transana - www.transana.org.
They piloted the program with a group of students in a UW class on Supervising Teaching and Learning and found that the observation application worked fairly well as a tool. Administrators have requested being able to use it - thought it would be valuable to sit down with their teachers and walk through things together.
The interface is very basic - a classroom map on the right, with class&teacher data/lesson background buttons above. a large video window in the upper left, anda set of commenting tools beneath it. there are four buttons that can be customized by the person doing the evaluation. They found that when these buttons were predefined it constrained the evaluation strategies and styles of the person playing the "game." The tool allows the "player" to pause - in the game mode, they envision removing the ability to pause time - as a reflection of the players greater evaluation skills.
We then got a chance to try our hand with the observation tool.
One of the presenters came by to see how we were doing. We wandered slightly off-topic and he shared an annecdote from another project (using DSs for classroom vocabulary instruction) he was working on where an evaluator refused to see student discussion as a positive thing - a lively discussion about evaluation strategies and PT3 video programs then ensued among the folks at my table.
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