#flippedclass

Flipping the Elementary Classroom

Early Friday morning at #CUE18, I wove my way around the hallway traffic all the way to the furthest end of the conference building. I am glad I got there early because by the time @teacherskaggs started her presentation there were very few remaining seats. As an Elementary teacher, a flipped classroom sounds daunting. How on earth would I be able to flip my classroom for all those subjects?…

Hey guys, as of last year I took the challenge of flipping my classroom. For starters, I was very fortunate to have only have 2 different plans (CP Algebra IIA, Applied Algebra IA) so that is one thing to consider.

It does take a lot of time to put into play, however I found it to be very rewarding. Foremost, was MY OWN access to technology. I would not have been so willing to do this had I not had an easy device to make videos etc. Despite our school being big on Macs, I have a surface pro 4.  It is amazing. I am sure there are similar devices for Mac (Ipad perhaps) but the power of this is great.

The general process I took was to upload my “notes” in form of PDF. The Surface came with PDF editing software that allowed me to write on the PDF and record as a video.  If you check out some more of my videos on DvorskyClass in youtube, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr1NMac0g7c_UtG9iX_B5vQ

you can see how the videos are done. Nothing too fancy, but short/sweet and too the point.

My main idea was to take care of the basic stuff and a few examples of problems. The things like vocab and such that take up time at the beginning of class and typically lose students.  They would then come into class and we would discuss their initial findings, go over questions, and practice.

One disclaimer I found.... Just because its technology and videos does not mean students will like class any more. It took a while for my classes to get accustomed to the style, but once they did it was refreshing. I think that we have become so obsessed with trying to make everything in education technology based that we have the notion of “why don’t you like this, its a video!”.  It has to be implemented correctly.

I took a serious look at how I can improve the course, asking for student feedback. One was to “shorten videos” which I did end up doing. As I began I thought of just “replacing my normal lecture 20+ min to video”.  I had thought it would be easy for students... 20 minutes of homework, that’s it essentially. But I found this far from the case. Again, just because its a video doesn’t mean they will sit there and be “engaged”.  I did research and found that 1 min / year of student is more appropriate so I shortened them to under 15 minutes which was largely successful.

Sorry about all this talk, but I hope it helped show my views and give some examples of tech. Please also note... if you watch the videos there are mistakes :-P for one, it was a great tool to KNOW if students watched the videos as they point them out in class, and two it saved time from me obsessing over making the videos.

I participated in #flipclass for the first time in forever tonight. As usual, I dig the folks there, and the conversation is incredibly quick and stimulating. The topic for the night was the nature of the flipped classroom, how it's defined, and where it is going. 

I've been batting around how much I want to flip my class next year. I started at a new school this year, so I was hesitant to do something completely crazy. Next year, though, I plan to be a bit braver, a bit more crazy. More of the Riggs of high school teaching. (Riggs was the one Mel Gibson played, right?)

It's hard for me to say exactly where flipped classes are going or even what they should be since I feel I haven't dove into it yet. What I'm currently processing is how, like a lot of things that are truly good for students, flipped classrooms seem to be in conflict with what our testing-company-backed politicians want us to do. The push seems to be for ways to collect data that are easy, 100% objective, and quantifiable. And I don't think flipped classes allow for that. 

After all, to me, the point of a flipped class is that the students are doing complicated, higher-order thinking tasks in the classroom with teacher guidance. Everyone is sort of moving at his or her own pace. And that gets messy. It gets messy, and it gets complicated, and you can't easily walk by and click something on your iPad to assess whether it was observed in the classroom. 

Here comes the broken record: education would be so much more AWESOME if the people with power would listen to the people who know what they are talking about.