Sharing the Flipped Classroom at TeachMeet Brighton March 2012
Sharing the Flipped Classroom at TeachMeet Brighton March 2012
This is the presentation I will be giving at TeachMeet in Brighton on 8 March 2012.
benrouse
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Blogging: The new exercise book?
Have I discovered the answer to all my problems? A class blog…
I have been thinking about starting a class blog for some time but as with these things I have been busy and never got myself organised to start. This post should give me the prod I need to make this happen.
The Blog
Using wordpress I have created http://rouseclassblogs.com/ in order for my classes to record their progress in lessons. I am going to start with my year 8 group and using an extra laptop one student in a lesson will be given the task of writing the post. Recording the title of the lesson, the task, key words, ideas and make a record of how the lesson went.
There will be a rota so the students know when their turn is coming. I also hope to develop a crib sheet to help create a useful content to each blog post. However, I intend to let this guidance come out of the process from review and feedback in class.
The Learning
Each blog post can be allocated to a category from Number, Algebra, Geometry, Shape and Space, Data Handling and Probability. This gives all stake holders; students, parents and teacher the opportunity to easily search lessons for a number of purposes. Prior to assessments students can review past lessons. Parents can subscribe to the blog or RSS feed to stay up to date with the learning taking place in their child’s class. As a teacher I have the chance to review the progress by reading the blog posts.
More excitingly is the use of tags! “group work”, “fun”, “problem solving”, in addition to topic references could help make the blog become a real tool for learning.
The Challenges
I need investment from the students to write something they have thought about. Therefore I will need to invest time in reviewing and feeding back on their posts. A starter task?
I have to find a regularity of blog that can be maintained rather than a burst over a month that fades.
I hope to report back on the successes and challenges of this additional learning tool in my classroom.
Some things you may wish to discuss with might be:
One blog per class or one page per class on a blog? Can it work equally well for all Key Stages?
All thoughts welcome
Ben Rouse
Making Videos for Learning in the Flipped Classroom
As part of the flipped classroom I have created a series of videos for my students to watch to help them understand key concepts and review tests and exams. The second use has been a revelation as I always struggled with exam/test feedback as it was never appropriate for all students for the whole lesson. So now I make video solutions for the entire test and give them their tests back in class with comments and advice to improve. Their homework is to go away and make full corrections. Replacing the “going through the test” section is a series of tasks designed to help plug the gaps identified by the test.
To create the videos I past the questions into Smartnotebook. Using an AIPTEK tablet and pen I can write solutions onto Smartnotebook and use Jing Pro to capture video of what is happening on screen while it also activates the microphone to allow my commentary to accompany the solutions.
Once complete there is an option to upload the video straight to youtube so their is no need to take up file space on your computer. Once uploaded code to embed the video is placed on your clipboard and I then paste this into my wikispace to embed the video there and then. A cheeky ifttt recipe which automatically tweets when I upload a new video to youtube gets the information out there and hey presto, piff paff puff classroom time has been saved and more reflection, review and feedback can take place.
Go my wikispace or my youtube channel (mrbrouse) to view the results.
If making the videos is not something you are ready to do then try using other people’s. You are welcome to use mine or otherwise try these youtube legends:
mrbuckton4maths
talktofile
maths247
examsolutions
Enjoy
Google Teacher Academy 2012
Google have offered another chance for educators to become a Google certified teacher. The application involves creating a one minute video on one of two themes provided by Google. The themes are “Classroom Innovation” and “Motivation”. I chose to focus on the former and created a video looking at the new innovation spreading through education, the flipped classroom.
Having offered my classroom for the Flipped Classroom open house on 30 January 2012 it seemed sensible to focus on this innovation. Since my last post regarding the flipped classroom a couple of my classes have become fairly familiar with the concept and show no shock, concern or trepidation when they are set homework which requires them to research/prepare for topics via videos I have created in order to focus on higher order skills in the following lesson. My lesson evaluation Google form has been essential for responding to the student’s needs and reflecting on how the flipped classroom can work best for my classes.
I almost didn’t submit my effort as I made the mistake of looking at the competition… wow! Some people’s application videos are technical masterpieces other have a large contribution from their students and colleagues. But after my colleague (@talktofile) had a word with me I made a last minute drive to submit something that made a attempt to showcase my efforts in the flipped classroom.
Why do I want to be Google certified?
I use Google documents constantly for myself, for faculty and with students for collaboration so a chance to work more closely with Google on education may develop my use of the products I already value.
I want my school to go Google so email, resource sharing, blogging and many other services can come under one login. Also if the students could have access to Google documents without me asking them all to create accounts it would make the collaboration in class much more successful.
#ukedchat takes place through twitter every Thursday from 8pm until 9pm and allows educators to subit their experience and views on a chosen topic. On Thursday 16 February the topic was “technology on a shoestring” and the conversation was very thought provoking and something I hope leaders of #edtech in schools pay attention to. Google Docs came out as a favourable free alternative to help schools have effective edtech that represents value for money, or value for learning…
@peterweal: @MrG_ICT agree VLEs surplus to goggle docs and blogs. No brainer. #ukedchat
@MrG_ICT: Agree Google docs is amazing collaborative tool. and free. Many primaries spending thousands on VLEs and not using #ukedchat
@GeorgeEBlack: #ukedchat one thing I do know, a well administered set of free blogs does the job of a VLE any day.
@mattbritland: #ukedchat The use of google docs or other cloud applications stops the need to constantly updating office software.
My Google based vision
I’d like to aim for:
- A set of chromebooks which students can use their school based Google account to login to. The login process on a chromebook take seconds.
- A class blog page which students contribute to on a rotating timetable each lesson, sharing the task/topic/progress and any pictures or videos as necessary. This would provide a log of all our lessons and would solve any problems for students that have any time out of class for support or illness.
- A faculty Google site where staff can share ideas and resources with each other. It also contains links to all our shared Google documents. This would include schemes of work, assessment tasks, project tasks etc. The site can also have a varity of Google forms embedded which allow teachers to log positives and concerns for students, and many other proceedural issues that can be managed more easily in this way.
- Students can use their Google Calender to enter exam dates, deadlines and would be very effectvie for organising group collaboration outside of the classroom by scheduling time to be online to work on a Google document together, inviting participants.
Hardware and software made specifically for education offers no value for money. Having a developer of the size of Google involved in education can keep schools closer to technology that represents developments in the real world rather than relying on a few innovative teachers to provide ad hoc opportunities which involve excessive time to prepare in order to avoid any technical or appropriate use of technology issues.
I have not yet found an effective way of using Google+ in education.
Back to the flipped classroom
The flipped classroom would be more effective if it could be integrated in such a way that schemes of work are available to students and parents as well as teachers. Cloud based storage allows documents to be updated regularly but avoid everyone having out-of-date copies littering their hardrives. Feedback and communication can be improved by allowing parents access to markbooks, something a colleague of mine has achieved by transferring his markbooks to Google Docs.
Am I being paid by Google
No, even though this blog post may be a little bias towards using one companies versions of things that can be achieved in a number of ways. I am a great fan of Wikispaces (I have created many) and blog via WordPress so I do not promote using one supplier but in the classroom setting where I have been asking my students to create logins for a variety of tasks I think they would value a coordinated structure to the variety of technology that can be used to enhance their education.
If any other provider wishes to show me how I can integrate this vision in another way… I am all ears.
Spend wisely as the pace of edtech increases
Schools and technology have a strange relationship, for any teachers that have worked outside of the public sector you too may have realised this. Most schools have rules that specifically deny teachers and students access to information. I notice a change in this coming…
Youtube is blocked because it contains inane or inapproapriate material, schools are now recognising the wealth of information available for the students with a few well chosen search words. With a search for “mrbrouse” you will find my channel where I am steadily accumulating a catalogue of maths based videos for my students to use. So as we grant schools access to youtube and khan academy we no longer need to pay for video streaming software, but schools still do. BETT took place earlier this month, allowing many companies to display wierd and wonderful technological innovations schools can break the bank to aquire, only to fill a cupboard unused and gathering dust. I was not able to attend BETT but thanks to twitter I did follow the comments from those educators that did. The most inspiring and useful aspect of this was Teach Meet@BETT hosted by Tom Barrett where teachers presented and discussed some of the innovative ideas they are developing to inspire the learners lucky enough to have been placed in their class. Teach meets take place regularly around the country and cost nothing and involve inspiring teachers sharing ideas.
Could the best use of technology money be hiring a minibus and taking teachers to these events, maybe throw in a meal too?
There seem to still be pots of money flying around that are designed to bring technology to schools but via my interactions with my PLN on twitter the best resources seem to be free, and most reliant on having the right people using them.
Education is starting to get very excited about ipads, not yet tablets in general. This trend has merit and I can envisage a time when every student enters their lessons with their individual device whether it be tablet, notebook or “phone” (don’t use the phone much myself). There is a danger that schools repeat a previous mistake and invest in technology before people. A large spend on ipads will only bring the benefits if the teachers are champing at the bit to use them for learning. I know of many teachers who are worried about this invasion of their classroom, and if the students have the technology and the teacher doesn’t understand it it will be used in the wrong way.
With tablets evolving and the nature of technology in education being less about which products to get, but more about having easy access to resources as and when you need them; it seems to me that the a change of approach is required.
I don’t want someone else’s interpretation of what they think education needs, I want to create my own content with my colleagues and the students. I want to create applications and surely it won’t be long before the students can too as Michael Goves’s first proposal of any merit develops the study of computing in schools.
Just some thoughts on edtech. Hope to read your feedback.
Ben Rouse
Adventures in the Flipped Classroom…part 1
A colleague and I are trying to flip our classrooms for delivering mathematics to some of our secondary classes. I have focussed on my year 10 and year 13 groups. My interpretation of the flipped classroom has been to create videos, containing examples of the skills they require for an up coming lessons using jing pro to capture my notes and commentary on the screen, uploading them to youtube and embedding them on my wikispace.
The year 13 class have taken to the idea easily, watching the videos for homework freeing our class time for more focussed work. It has improved the understanding of the students as in the traditional approach they focussed on a demonstration of one or two questions in the lesson followed by attempting more challenging work alone for homework, which proved probelmatic for the weaker students. By adding a flipped approach they have been more successful on some of the difficult aspects of A2 mathematics as they get more time working with a teacher for support, and their homework is improving!
My year 10 class, however have had a more varied response to the approach with some expressing a belief that I should be teaching because I am the teacher. Ironically after their first video watching homework I provided them with some questions and problems to solve and set up a tutorial table for any questions. For the first fifteen minutes of the lesson I had nothing to do as they all worked solidly without needing any input. This did allow me time to plan for the next few lessons update their markbook.
After a reflection at the end of the lesson we decided that more differentiated work is needed so the students can choose the level they attempt based on how successfully they understood the video material.
My colleague and I are pleased to have developed a method that can individualise the input students get, avoiding the problem of students sitting through explanations they do not need, time when they could be progressing independently. We are wary of overusing this approach as it is not a total solution for delivering knowledge and developing understanding. Used as a teaching technique I feel confident it can add to the tools of the trade and help students to develop independence modelling an approach to revision.
I would value any feedback on the content I am providing if you wish to comment on my videos my searching for mrbrouse on youtube.
If you are interested in flipping your classroom try http://vodcasting.ning.com/ or http://goo.gl/47HRN
Flipping Marvellous
Ben Rouse
Developing towards an independent learning environment
I think I have had a vision of the classroom I want to develop.
I have been investigating QR codes (2D bar codes that can be scanned by smartphones and webcams) and how they can be used in the classroom. A site that has given me no end of ideas can be found by following this link. It seems that the smartphone can be a useful tool in bringing information to the students. One of the main concerns of educators is that we try to give students independence by setting them a project or investigation only to receive a copy of the first website generated by a google search. If a project information sheet contains a few QR codes directing students to valuable information then we could start to help them learn from investigations more often.
Another project I have set myself is to start creating videos for my students to view. So far I have started by demonstrating exam questions for my upper sixth class rather than subjecting the whole class to a demonstration of a question half of them can do. I am using jing, on the advice of a colleague, and it seems fairly straight forward and the subscription is very affordable. My colleague is a long way ahead of me and is beginning to develop some truly differentiated lessons where students can choose to work on questions, sit with him and discuss concepts they are unsure about or watch a video explanation he created for the lesson. How often do we deliver examples and explanations to an entire class irregardless of whether all, most or some of them already have a good grasp.
So, imagine this… the students enter the room and are given a worksheet, project sheet or exam questions. They can start immediately if they understand or can join you for further explanation after they have read the instructions. In additon to that the worksheet, project sheet or exam questions there are a few QR codes printed on the sheets or left around the room that link to a variety of resources such as:
1. lesson notes from a previous lesson saved on google docs or alternative file sharing site.
2. video tutorials you created the day before aimed at common misconceptions or key methods
3. revision websites
4. lesson evaluation form created in google docs so they can feedback on the process to you each lesson.
5. grade descriptors so they can self assess and set targets
6. mark scheme for exam questions so they can self or peer assess.
Am I being naive to imagine this scenario? If so let me know or please let me know if you have tried any or all of these ideas out with a class.
Enquiry based learning of mathematics
This TED talk by Dan Meyer is a great wake-up call for mathematics teachers. I think this is a simple way of creating a truly rich task.
Is there a free alternative to all educational ICT needs?
With so many free, well developed resources out there are we paying out unnecessarily from our small budgets?
Thanks to twitter and all the educationalists I now follow I have been overwhelmed by the amount of free, easily available resources for the classroom. As a maths teacher I have been using graphing software and question banks which the school has purchased from the budget year after year. For example we have paid for a licence for a piece of graphing software, but there is geogebra and this web resource which are more intuitive and have most of the functionality for day to day lessons.
We have also purchased access to a site which offers video tutorials and practice questions in the past few years, however I have not renewed our subscription thanks to khan academy and mathscentre. Both provide extensive resources for students to develop their mathematical skills, yes, free of charge. It is worth mentioning that the paid resources can provide more structured resources that reflect specific exam board specifications but for free I’ll happily spend a few hours arranging the correct links to guide students to the ones they need. QR codes are helping me do this, for free.
This shows a few subject specific examples of free alternatives that can have the same impact on learning in and out of the mathematics classroom. If we start to think from a school-wide perspective the savings can be even greater. Every school I know of is trying to find a virtual learning platform (VLE) to fulfil their obligations to make resources accessible to students and parents. Most of the VLE’s I have experienced are difficult to navigate and essentially serve as a file dump. I can only assume this is the case because educational ICT development has a tiny fraction of the funding that companies such as Google can donate to development. Therefore I feel that in education we can lag behind in the technology we offer our students.
I have found my wikispace sites, Google sites and Google documents perform the very same function, in a more usable and effective way for free! My google documents can provide the opportunity for students to collaborate in a way the VLE’s I am aware of cannot. My wikispace gets more hits each day than our VLE and the students speak positively about the wikispace, which is immeasurably easier to update and manage. I am considering using Google docs to make information available to parents…for free! I can embed widgets into wikispaces easily making the site more interactive than our VLE, most successfully demonstrated by my lesson evaluation form, which my students are completing regularly, giving me valuable feedback on my practice, for free.
The school I work in has issues with data storage as teachers start to develop pod-casting and other data rich activities. Is a ‘cloud’ the cheaper option? I pay very little for a reasonable amount of storage online, with all the savings that can be made can clouds be the answer to storage issues?
I am sure I have only scraped the surface of the plethora of free resources that could unburden our tightly squeezed budgets. I hope you are discovering this too and we can all share our free resources. Let me know your thoughts here or by tweeting your ideas @mr_brouse using #edtechforfree. Maybe I am being naive, if so let me know why.
Ben Rouse (if only I was this determined to save my own money)
Using google forms for lesson feedback
This year, after signing up to twitter, I have gone on a technology frenzy. One of the ideas I picked up from twitter was that wikispaces can be created quickly and easily for free for educational use. I have now created four of them.
The first was a professional site for sharing ideas, this has not proved to be the most useful as I have found this site and twitter to be effective in sharing ideas. The second was a site for my students to view, which contains resources and links to useful mathematical sites such as wolfrum alpha, khan academy etc. These are sites twitter has made me more familiar with. This wikispace for students has proved very useful and students are beginning to use it regularly, especially as my schools VLE is cumbersome and unfit for purpose. This wikispace contains lesson files, homeworks and most excitingly a lesson evaluation form.
Google docs introduced a form with very little publicity, it could be the most resources for teachers and students in relation to reflective practice and AfL. My students have started to complete the embedded questionnaire created in google docs giving amazing feedback on all my lessons.
If you are trying to reflect on your teaching and the learning of the students in your care one tool you must take advantage of is google forms.
You can see my early efforts here, feedback welcome of course.
Let me know how you get on via this website or find me on twitter @mr_brouse
Here are some collections to help you get some ideas to get started.
wikispaces
google forms
Ben Rouse
Ben Rouse is a mathematics teacher in the south east of the UK. As head of faculty he is trying to develop effective use of technology amongst the staff and students at his school. Please pop in to see how he is getting on.
Education Mathematics and Technology on Twitter
- @BryanPlumb Twitter is useful to me as a #teacher for sharing ideas, keeps me up to date, develop my t&l #ukedchat #edtech #staffroomonline 4 days ago
- @ddmeyer Hi, I have been trying to email you about your UK trip but the email keeps bouncing back. Is there an alternative way to enquire? 5 days ago
