2009 Reports

Final Report: Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL): A Learning Environment for Courses in Early Childhood Mathematics Education

Moretti, Frank A.; Ginsburg, Herbert P.

The VITAL Early Childhood Mathematics Education Project final report summarizes a five-year endeavor funded by the National Science Foundation to support the development of and research on Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL), a web-based platform for the dissemination of courses on early childhood mathematics education and tools for video analysis. Developed by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) and Jacob H. Schiff Foundations Professor of Psychology and Education Herbert P. Ginsburg of Teachers College, VITAL helps education students learn more about the teaching and assessment of children by viewing, clipping, and annotating videos of children engaged in mathematical activities, and using their selected clips as evidence to support arguments in a multimedia essay space, thereby encouraging the development of formative assessment skills and better-informed practice as teachers. The VITAL report details the products created throughout the grant period, including the open-source VITAL software—tools for viewing and editing videos and a multimedia essay space—the VITAL early childhood mathematics curriculum, video library, model courses for use at other institutions, faculty guide, and numerous publications, as well as results of research performed by the VITAL assessment team. The Java-based iteration of the VITAL codebase has been released under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0. http://code.google.com/p/vital-video/