How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter - Part 2 (of 4)
[This past summer (2018) I had the opportunity to present at two different Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning conferences; the South Shore eLearning Conference hosted by School City of Hammond and the eVillage Conference hosted by East Porter County Schools in conjunction with eLeadNWI. The presentation that easily received the most buzz was my "How I Flipped My Classroom In All the Ways That Matter." This blog entry is the second in a four part series outlining the contents of that presentation.]
Part 1 Recap: Teaching the way I was taught wasn't working. I started using Khan Academy in class. That helped. But I wanted more. Great. Now you're up to speed.
The following August I began the school year using Khan Academy in my Algebra 1 classes. It wasn't the only thing we used, but we used it plenty. While Khan Academy did offer students the opportunity to practice specific skills with instant feedback, the tutorial videos were not a great way to deliver instruction. They helped when students were stuck on a topic, but it did not seem to be working well in terms of the initial instruction that students would need. Thankfully, I caught this early and worked more direct instruction back into the daily routine to make sure that students were getting more detailed and thorough explanations.
And that worked. At least it worked in the sense that I wasn't losing ground with whatever gains I had made the previous year in terms of engagement and learning. And I believe that I also picked up a few more of the kids in the middle. But I wasn't interested in "not losing ground". I wanted to make advances. I wanted things to be better for my students. All of them.
At the end of the year I was in the same place I was at the end of the previous year; things were mildly better for the students who would do the work anyway, but nothing much had changed for the ones who were harder to reach.
One thing I had to look forward to was the implementation of 1:1 the following August. This would be a radical shift in the environment in which students would be learning. I knew that this change would bring along with it more opportunities for my students and it would make many of the kinds of changes I was looking for possible. I wanted to take full advantage.
I had recently heard about a method called "Flipped Classroom" and knew enough about it to be seriously considering such a radical shift in instruction. A flipped classroom is a learning environment where instructional materials like lectures and examples are pre-recorded by the teacher and shared in advance of the lesson. Students view the lecture and either send questions to the teacher before class or ask them during class. Class time is devoted to answering questions, working on assignments, projects, whatever the activity is for that day.
After thinking it over, I realized that flipping my classroom would be fairly easy, in principle at least. I would need a source for the videos, either self-made or from a library of previously made videos. I could record my own videos using the SnagIt Chrome extension or try this new thing called YouTube. I would need a way to distribute the videos to my students. We would all have chromebooks and school issued email addresses. And it may be helpful to have a way to see who watched the videos and who did not. I already knew about edpuzzle, so I knew that could work.
So. Simple.
Flipping your classroom is so not simple. It takes a very long time and a huge commitment up front to even do the first year. You can either spend hours of time making your own videos or you can spend hours of time sorting through videos online to see which ones you want to use. It turns out that a lot of people have heard of YouTube and you can find videos to learn just about anything, let alone Algebra 1 skills. I started by trying to use videos from YouTube but quickly realized that I would save time by just making my own. I could make one or a couple of videos that I knew would have the content that I wanted to make sure they had. I also thought it would be nice for my students if the voice of the person doing the teaching in the videos was my own.
I flipped my classroom for two years this way. And guess what happened. Engagement and learning both improved. And you can probably guess who the primary beneficiaries of this change were as well. The students who were already going to do their work or anything else I asked. Once again, however, there were still too many students that I wasn't picking up.
Over the course of about 4 years I had managed to win some significant battles for my students and managed not to lose another one. But in some sense I was still fighting these battles defensively. I was helping the students who were the easiest to help. If I wanted to realize the changes I knew had to happen, I would have to go on offense. To do that, I was going to need some help.
Part 1 Recap: Teaching the way I was taught wasn't working. I started using Khan Academy in class. That helped. But I wanted more. Great. Now you're up to speed.
The following August I began the school year using Khan Academy in my Algebra 1 classes. It wasn't the only thing we used, but we used it plenty. While Khan Academy did offer students the opportunity to practice specific skills with instant feedback, the tutorial videos were not a great way to deliver instruction. They helped when students were stuck on a topic, but it did not seem to be working well in terms of the initial instruction that students would need. Thankfully, I caught this early and worked more direct instruction back into the daily routine to make sure that students were getting more detailed and thorough explanations.
And that worked. At least it worked in the sense that I wasn't losing ground with whatever gains I had made the previous year in terms of engagement and learning. And I believe that I also picked up a few more of the kids in the middle. But I wasn't interested in "not losing ground". I wanted to make advances. I wanted things to be better for my students. All of them.
At the end of the year I was in the same place I was at the end of the previous year; things were mildly better for the students who would do the work anyway, but nothing much had changed for the ones who were harder to reach.One thing I had to look forward to was the implementation of 1:1 the following August. This would be a radical shift in the environment in which students would be learning. I knew that this change would bring along with it more opportunities for my students and it would make many of the kinds of changes I was looking for possible. I wanted to take full advantage.
I had recently heard about a method called "Flipped Classroom" and knew enough about it to be seriously considering such a radical shift in instruction. A flipped classroom is a learning environment where instructional materials like lectures and examples are pre-recorded by the teacher and shared in advance of the lesson. Students view the lecture and either send questions to the teacher before class or ask them during class. Class time is devoted to answering questions, working on assignments, projects, whatever the activity is for that day.
After thinking it over, I realized that flipping my classroom would be fairly easy, in principle at least. I would need a source for the videos, either self-made or from a library of previously made videos. I could record my own videos using the SnagIt Chrome extension or try this new thing called YouTube. I would need a way to distribute the videos to my students. We would all have chromebooks and school issued email addresses. And it may be helpful to have a way to see who watched the videos and who did not. I already knew about edpuzzle, so I knew that could work.
So. Simple.
Flipping your classroom is so not simple. It takes a very long time and a huge commitment up front to even do the first year. You can either spend hours of time making your own videos or you can spend hours of time sorting through videos online to see which ones you want to use. It turns out that a lot of people have heard of YouTube and you can find videos to learn just about anything, let alone Algebra 1 skills. I started by trying to use videos from YouTube but quickly realized that I would save time by just making my own. I could make one or a couple of videos that I knew would have the content that I wanted to make sure they had. I also thought it would be nice for my students if the voice of the person doing the teaching in the videos was my own.I flipped my classroom for two years this way. And guess what happened. Engagement and learning both improved. And you can probably guess who the primary beneficiaries of this change were as well. The students who were already going to do their work or anything else I asked. Once again, however, there were still too many students that I wasn't picking up.
Over the course of about 4 years I had managed to win some significant battles for my students and managed not to lose another one. But in some sense I was still fighting these battles defensively. I was helping the students who were the easiest to help. If I wanted to realize the changes I knew had to happen, I would have to go on offense. To do that, I was going to need some help.
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