#FlipClass Experiment Series - Why Flip?

One of the questions I get a lot is, "Why would you want to flip your class?"  I have a few reasons, from my personal experience, for wanting to flip my classroom, and of course I'll share them with you.
After moving toward this method of teaching last year I found that by saving as much time as possible during class for actual work I got to do way more quality teaching than I ever did in the past.  Students were engaged and busy during class, and with me not wasting time preaching from the front of the room to a disinterested audience, I got to spend my time teaching students what they needed and wanted to know through a series of teachable moments with interested students.  I love teachable moments, and I have found that the more time you have in class for one-on-one help, the more teachable moments you seem to have.
Next, students gain a lot of understanding through the video instruction.  As opposed to a classroom lecture, students have the ability to pause me while taking notes and rewind to hear something again.  In addition to this, they like the fact that they are watching a video instead of sitting still and shutting up.  They've had enough of that, and my videos are different and therefore "cool."
I also go back to my college days and think of the lovely "Dale's Cone of Experience" and consider the implications of (a) using videos to present lecture content, (b) using class time for more active work, and (c) incorporating collaborative, project-based activities in class.  I'm moving my class further down the cone by not having them "Read Section 2.4" or sit and listen to me preach.

Lastly, from a more practical and less theoretical viewpoint, I am teaching my students much more than just the Algebra I content expectations.  They are picking up an invaluable life lesson in their taking ownership of their own education.  They are learning a lot about knowing what they do and don't know as well as options they have to do something about it.  They are learning, through the use of Khan Academy, that education is valuable and becoming increasingly more available and free for those who thirst for knowledge.  And, they are learning to learn through the use of some 21st century tools that are becoming the norm in higher education.

I feel like I could ramble forever on this topic, and it is one that I love, but these are my big reasons for flipping my class.  Hopefully my enthusiasm continues to rub off on my students as the year progresses out of the first marking period.

Image By Jeffrey Anderson [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

#FlipClass Experiment Series - Flip What?

As I've been writing a few posts about flipping my Algebra I class, it occurred to me that some in my audience might be a little lost on what a flipped classroom actually is, so let's break this down.  In a flipped class, students use classroom time to complete what used to be homework and time outside of class to receive instruction in the form of what used to be a classroom lecture.  The passive stuff, like lectures, are completed independently at home while classroom time is devoted to more active tasks like project-based learning, practice assignments, group work, etc.
My classroom operates in the following format:

• Lectures are delivered in the form of streaming videos that I link to from a couple of sources.  I use a mix of videos from Khan Academy and my own screencast recordings explaining different concepts.  Students are expected to view these videos either at home or outside of our regular meeting times, and they are responsible for the content presented in much the way students are responsible for reading material from a text.
• We start each Quarter with all assignments for the Quarter up front (see image below), and students can work through the material and assignments at their pace (with deadlines).  Assignments vary from completion of Khan Academy modules to paper and pencil assignments to collaborative problem solving activities to larger scale, long-term projects to Chapter Tests.

• Class time is used predominantly for working through assignments while leaving loads of time for one-on-one help where students get stuck.  On any given day in my classroom, I may have students working on various Khan Academy Modules with a few taking their Chapter Test while another group is working on a project together in the corner.  It can seem chaotic at times, but you can feel the learning happening.

#FlipClass Experiment Series - Access

Since this whole idea of flipping a classroom is fairly new in education, of course there are going to be plenty of issues and growing pains that come up along the way.  The biggest concern I have had raised in my work in flipping my class is access.  I have had questions raised from everyone from administrators to parents to students to other teachers looking to flip their classrooms, and every single group has raised the issue of access.  For some school districts this won't be as much of a concern, but teaching in a rural area means I have to be aware of and sensitive to the fact that not everyone has access to a high speed internet connection when they leave the school building.  I have found the following in my experience:

• The issue of access to high speed internet is not as prevalent as some might make it out to be.  I teach in a district that is designated as a low-income district, and I thought this was going to be a huge hurdle, but it wasn't.  While I do have some students without internet at home, there are not as many as I thought there would be.  High-speed internet is becoming the norm, even in rural areas.  You'll still need to account for this, but lack of access is definitely becoming the exception, not the rule.
• Some students without internet access still have a computer in the home.  I have a few students for whom I download classroom videos to a flash drive and send the videos home that way.  If students have a computer, just no internet... no problem.  They can still receive the content.
• Keeping the computer lab open at school as much as possible is mandatory.  I arrive at least 30 minutes before the school day kicks off each day and usually around an hour after school to allow students to have time with internet access if they need it.
• Surprisingly, a growing number of students with no high speed internet at home have access to mobile devices that will work over a wi-fi network.  Our school is working on an open wi-fi network to allow students to bring their own devices, and many students will hit up the McDonald's with their smartphone to get the access that they need.

Requiring access to a high speed internet connection can be a tricky move, and if not done with tact, can definitely ruffle some feathers.  If you're thinking about flipping your class, make sure you plan ahead and are prepared for this issue to come up... because it will.

#FlipClass Experiment Series

So my Intro to the Read/Write Web students begin blogging this week, and as The Nerdy Teacher suggested in a post on Edutopia, I'm going to pick my blog back up to serve as a model for my students.  As I considered this reentry to the blogging community, I thought I would take the advantage this time to document my work in "Flipping" my Algebra I course for this school year with a series of posts about my experience.  Hopefully my students will take something away from reading my posts, but what would make me even happier is if someone reading this finds my experiences useful.  Of course I would love to hear comments from any new followers I might pick up to help me hone my skills in this new venture.
As an introduction to where I stand, I began incorporating lessons and practice modules from Khan Academy into my Algebra I course last year since I had been moved into a computer lab to teach.  The use of these resources gradually grew to be more of a part of the everyday class as the year progressed, so I took the next step for this year and decided to fully flip my class.  I spent some time over the summer organizing the course, and already have made some major changes after only a month in the classroom.  I'll talk in more detail about these, along with what seems to be working (and not working), and all of the further changes that are sure to come around, later on.
These posts will be mirrored on the site I use to teach my Intro to the Read/Write Web course in Weebly where my students will be able to view them and leave their comments, but I look forward to any professional comments on this site so please comment away.  I'm also going to try to stick to the assigned theme I give to my students each week, so I apologize ahead of time for any scattered thoughts.
I'm really excited to be blogging again looking forward to documenting this experiment in flipping my classroom.  Thanks for reading, and please feel free to share.

Follow-up

After my last post, I thought I should follow up a bit.  I sent my last post to my principal, and it started a much needed discussion/debate.  To set-up his response, he's very hard line against social networking and mobile devices in school.  I've spoken with him at every opportunity about the need and benefit of using these resources in school, and we've developed an ongoing, fun argument about it.  I get where he's coming from, to a point, and he definitely has the best interests of his student body and their education in mind.  He has allowed students in my classes to use their mobile devices while they are in my classroom, and I see this as a compliment to my teaching ability since it is so far out of his comfort zone.

My principal quickly shot back at me last week that we should have a debate about it, and while he was confident that I would oversee the use of social networks adequately and teach students to use them appropriately, he couldn't say the same for every other teacher.  I understand this, and this led to the bigger problem behind the problem that leads to the outright ban of these sites:  network rights.  My side of the debate brought up the fact that Chemistry teachers frequently use hydrochloric acid in their classes, even though it can be very dangerous.  But, because those teachers are qualified to oversee its use, we allow it because it is in the best interests of our students' education.  The problem is that hydrochloric acid is really easy to keep in the chemical locker while network rights to access Facebook, Twitter, etc. isn't currently easy to keep locked up in the computer lab.  As our network stands now, they are either accessible from our entire network or none of our network.

Grumble, grumble, debate more, grumble, grumble.

However far away the prospect of having the ability to teach my students what they really need to know may be, at least I can keep it front and center by continuing to bring it up and keep it in the conversation.  And, we know what we need to look at as a school; who knows, maybe sometime soon on our network, it will be possible to make certain machines in our building have different filter restrictions than others.  Let's make it a priority to find a way to allow the use of these "volatile chemicals"while still being able to keep them in the "social network chemical locker."

Social Networking: Come on Schools

Recently I decided, after hearing complaints from board members and parents, to browse around Twitter and see what my students were up to.  Holy cow; was I ever disappointed!  To set things up, a little background.  I do not have a Facebook account; I've never seen any need for it.  I do use Twitter, however, and I follow some friends and use it to keep up with news and posts about education and technology.  I don't post much, and I use it mostly for entertainment rather than business.  Since Twitter has exploded in popularity recently among our students, I decided to spend some time browsing around.

At first I was extremely disgusted with my students because of what I found.  I found more inappropriate language than I could have imagined, Jr. High students posting personal/objectionable information, sisters telling each other not to share with parents that they have these accounts, mentions of drug use, profanity, etc.  Simply appalling.  Thoughts running through my head varied from, "I should email screenshots to parents" to "Did these students not hear anything I said about internet safety" to "Don't these students realize that any future employer is going to be heading straight to what I was looking at upon application for a position and decide quickly not to hire them?"

But fairly quickly my disgust shifted from these students to what we do as a school... All social networks are flat out blocked and disallowed during the school day.  A while back, Scott McLeod posted a reference to this poster on his Mind Dump directed at this problem exactly.  It comes from David Truss, who also writes excellent analogies out of frustration with this same issue.

I quickly came to this analogy:  Social networking is like a jar full of candy.

What we do now, even in school, is teach students the benefits of eating healthy.  We allow them to eat real candy, but we teach them how to do it appropriately and in moderation.  We don't confiscate every Dum Dum that comes through our doors, but rather, we often use candy as a reward.  We teach them about the dangers of tooth decay and ways to avoid it.  We teach them about obesity and diabetes and their link to sugary foods.  Sure, candy can be bad for you, but we educate on the appropriate use of candy in order to avoid these issues.  It's called Health class.

On the other hand, with the Social Networking Candy Jar, we have shown it to students but repeatedly told them "No, you can't have ANY."  We keep that jar of candy just out of reach of students and pretend it isn't there (but students know it is).  We ignore it to the point that we don't even educate students on the benefits and dangers of it.  So, as soon as we are out of sight, students are digging into this Social Networking Candy Jar.  They're eating until their stomach aches and their teeth are falling out.  They don't know that this will  affect their future.  And even though we know students are are doing this, we just pretend they aren't and continue ignoring the problem and standing by our line of "Don't eat the candy."

Come on schools, get with it.  Broad internet filters and banning of Social Networking altogether isn't working.  Our students are involved with it.  The least we could do is educate them.

Image: David Truss, "Warning - We Filter Websites At School!" March 5, 2010 via Flickr, CC BY NC SA