Product Review of ADVANCEfeedback
This app pairs high-quality, targeted feedback with real-time data to promote educator growth—either in a live setting or through video. Instead of using subjective materials, which lead to different perceptions, ADVANCEfeedback uses evidence-based practices for conducting educational interactions. This app supports educator growth, whether in the form of self-reflection, peer feedback, or coaching uses.
What Users Love About the App
“The app allows for: 1) Asynchronous, but in-depth and useful feedback. I can take a video in the classroom, write up some feedback and get it to the teacher before the day ends, and my teachers can see that and act on it the next day. 2) Providing teachers with more power over the observation process.”
“I LOVE that this product can be used with multiple users. I can share a video observation with a colleague for feedback, but then also share the video with my administrator for additional feedback. I can see this program being used in a big picture scale in my organization because it also has the ability to incorporate the different steps of the observation process. The Alliance currently uses Bloomboard as our observation management site, but I think this can be the next level of teacher assessment.”
“This platform allows teachers to take control of their learning and development opportunities by allowing them space to practice reflecting on their own instructional strategies. Self reflection plays a huge part in teacher growth, but it also allows for coaches across the nation to access videos and assess in a normed process. The platform allows admin the opportunity to reference particular moments in the lesson when reviewing their rubric.”
“I like the organized streamlined way to share and create collaborative conversations with the annotations feature. It givesboth the teacher and the “evaluator” the opportunity to review the lesson repeatedly to hone in on details and areas for refinement.”
“The great strength of this product is that it gives me the feedback that we usually need to wait a year to get. I am now able to look at myself teaching the classroom and get as much feedback as I need. This allows me to become much better at what I do.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“The only thing that I would change about this product is the feature for creating chat/comment rooms. I asked if I would be able to share a video with different users without them being able to see each other’s comments. For example, if I share my video with another teacher and ask for feedback, would I be able to then share it with my administrator without the admin seeing my colleague’s comments? The answer was no; I would have to upload the video again to create a separate commenting conversation. I think creating different ‘rooms’ would alleviate the hassle of having to reload a video.”
“1. I would change that the product does not allow on individual to share in a network with a teacher across town. 2. The ability to look at data and then cache it where it can be available outside of the platform. 3. The cost of the platform should change so that one person or several could sign up without obstacle.”
“1) Creating a system by which teachers can choose to share ‘highlight’ clips that can be linked to other teachers as resources. For example, Teacher A is struggling with managing groupwork, and I note that in their video feedback; then I link them to Teacher B, who is a groupwork champ, for them to immediately see an example of what it could look like. 2) Along the same lines, I would also like to be able to tag ‘exemplar’ videos for each section of our own rubric and have it all come together in a master ‘exemplar’ page where teachers can see exactly what the best practices look like for each piece of our evaluation rubric. 3) This might already exist in the product, but asynchronous chat or commenting would be great. This would allow for a whole conversation about the video and feedback to occur without having to fight for a time to actually sit down and have that conversation. We could progress the feedback and Action Steps far beyond the level my current meetings go before even sitting down.”
“It is a well thought out program. One suggestion would be to have a built–in program for recording instead of uploading videos. I do wonder if that would mean the teacher might lose ownership of it, I’m not sure. Also, the program is very expensive.”
“The program should add a feature to save some things from the website (if user has been granted permission to do so).Additionally, it would be good to have an encryption feature so the content that is downloaded can be used later and only be played through the encryption key on the laptop or device being used.”
