To Flip Or Not Flip? To flip or not to flip? That is not the essential question. In assessing the optimal classroom dynamics, I would argue that we need to take a good look at what our classrooms look like right now, what activities our students gain the most from, what we wished we had more time for, and what things about our class we wish we could eliminate. Do I flip: yes. Would I recommend it: enthusiastically. But let’s start by rewinding for a minute, to my 2009 AP Calculus class. Running Out Of Time Worst of all, I felt that I never got to hear from my students because they were trying their best to digest the newly presented material. So I asked myself the same questions that I posed at the beginning of this essay: what is working, what is not, and what do I wish I had more time for? Planning In math, we often have the preconceived notion of a boring, rigid learning environment where the teacher lectures and the students do endless practice problems until the skill is mastered.
The Learning Cycle: The Learning Cycle: A Comparison of Models of Strategies for Conceptual Reconstruction: A Review of the Literature Several pedagogical frameworks have been devised that center on conceptual reconstruction. Renner. Renner's analogy for this entire process is that of a guided tour where the guide, the teacher, points out all the sights to be observed and the learner is discouraged from taking any detour that, in the guide's view, is not productive. If we accept that each of us must develop the understandings we have about a concept for ourselves, then Renner suggests an alternative teaching model as more appropriate. 1) His initial concern is with pupils gaining experience and this becomes the first stage of his teaching model. 2) In the second stage, the learner is introduced to some appropriately–specific terminology in relation to the phenomenon being investigated. Karplus. 2) In the second phase of the Karplus model, the concept is introduced and explained. Driver . Erickson. Barnes.
Expansive Education Network | Bill Lucas's Blog Zspace: The Future of 3D Learning - Getting Smart by Tom Vander Ark - STEM, virtual environments I started my engineering career on a drafting board in the late seventies before CAD programs were widely used. I recall the challenge of drawing objects in multiple perspectives. I remember my calculus teacher asking me to imagine rotating a curve around an axis. Today I visited the future of 3D learning and I’m excited about what’s in store for STEM students. Zspace is an immersive, interactive 3D environment created by InfiniteZ, a five year old company in Mountain View (also home of Google and Khan Academy). CEO Paul Kellenberger launched me on an amazing 3D field trip into Zspace, a beautiful 24 inch stereoscopic user interface. The implications for design and learning are immediately obvious, but Zspace is a platform—a hardware, software, and interface bundle—not yet a giant content library. These workstations will be pricy for a while, so Zspace is not an education 1:1 solution just yet.
The Flipped Classroom Model: A Full Picture Due to Khan Academy’s popularity, the idea of the flipped classroom has gained press and credibility within education circles. Briefly, the Flipped Classroom as described by Jonathan Martin is: Flip your instruction so that students watch and listen to your lectures… for homework, and then use your precious class-time for what previously, often, was done in homework: tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, crafting and creating. Classrooms become laboratories or studios, and yet content delivery is preserved. A compiled resource page of the Flipped Classroom (with videos and links) can be found at The advantage of the flipped classroom is that the content, often the theoretical/lecture-based component of the lesson, becomes more easily accessed and controlled by the learner. It is important, though, not to be seduced by the messenger. The Flipped Classroom Model Experiential Engagement: The Activity Summary
Slow Education and the Concept of Process by Professor Maurice Holt - Slow Education There was a brief fashion, a few years ago, for education pundits to sit at the back of a school class for a whole day, moving from lesson to lesson and sampling a day’s schooling. The usual conclusion was that there were too many room changes, and some lessons were boring. But at least the basic idea was sound – to see what the actual process of schooling was like – that succession of encounters between student and teacher which constitutes the student’s experience of schooling, as opposed to Ofsted-style selection of miscellaneous lessons. You would think, therefore, that if the government wanted to improve schooling, it would focus on enhancing teachers’ professionalism. There’s only one problem: it doesn’t work. England is already in decline, compared with other European countries.
Digital Badges For Learning in the Classroom and Beyond 6.20.12 | A pair of stories by Education Week reporter Katie Ash provides a big-picture overview of the pros and cons of digital badges and a close-up look at how badges are being used in a graduate course. Alex Halavais, who teaches a master’s program on interactive communications at Quinnipiac University, began implementing digital badges in place of a traditional grading scale last spring. The new system enables him—and his students’ prospective employers—to better gauge the specific skills his students master. “It’s an index of your learning biography,” Halavais told Education Week. In addition to substituting a certain number of badges for letter grades, Halavais also introduces a collaborative element. The badge system Halavais created relied on a peer-review process in which certain students who had achieved a certain level of badge could approve other students’ badges, says Rossi. Those concerns are not uncommon. – Connie Yowell, The MacArthur Foundation
The Flipped Class Manifest Photo: Document with Red Line by Dukeii (Editor's Note: The conversation and interest in the flipped class continues . . . From our very first post about this topic in January 2011 to date (3/30/13), The Daily Riff has received 250,000+ views to related posts which are linked below - extending to over 100 countries. Today's post is authored by eight notable advocates for the flipped classroom. Thanks goes to our guest post contributors, and of course, our avid readers. Disclosure: The Daily Riff is not financially affiliated in any way with the flipped class. - C.J. "The Flipped Classroom is an intentional shift of content which in turn helps move students back to the center of learning rather than the products of schooling." The Flipped Class Manifest The "Flipped Classroom" is a term that has recently taken root in education. What Does "Flip" Imply? "Flip" is a verb. What Do Classes Look Like? How Does a Flipped Classroom Fit into Instruction? Final Thoughts AuthorsBrian E.
Doctoral Thesis | Russell Francis The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age: an investigation into the implications of media change for learning My doctoral thesis explores the shifting locus of agency for regulating and managing learning in an age in which a top-down culture industry model of education is being subverted and disrupted by an emergent web-based participatory culture. The work is informed by a wide-ranging review of the literature on young people’s informal use of new media and draws on the findings of three empirical studies. However, overall it works as a theory building exercise and aims to contribute towards sociocultural ways of thinking about learning and human development. This page provides an introduction to the original thesis. Thesis Abstract Structure and Content Introduction: The Predicament of the Learner Quick View Chapter 1: The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age: an overview of relevant traditions in the literature Quick View Chapter 5: The Learner as Designer Gee, J.
Gamification: Bring Gaming Mechanics Into Non-gaming Environments - Getting Smart by Adam Renfro - fixing failure, gamification, gaming, pace Why would we want to gamify our classroom? It sounds like a lot of work, and gaming is . . . well, frivolous. Education is serious. Important. Seriously, if you want serious, the gaming industry is serious. Education on the other hand – well – let’s just say we are a change industry. Imagine if students were as involved in our classrooms as they are on their games. (Complex gaming in Portal 2) Why Gaming? Games are desirable. So how can we gamify our classrooms? I would say baby steps, but Montana science teacher Paul Andersen has raised the bar. Gaming Mechanics Let’s breakdown Paul’s video and add a few items for thought. The Story Modern games revolve around a story that often has a complex plotline. Clear Goals Games have very clear goals like “Recover the Ring.” Challenges We’ve got that covered with tests and quizzes, but we’re going to change the nature of those. Competition Gamers are either trying to beat the game itself or beat others playing the game. The Real Change Resources
6 Resources on Flipping the Classroom There’s lots of discussion and experimentation on the topic of Flipping the Classroom. Here are 6 resources with links to other resources on the topic: Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams are award-winning teachers in Colorado who use the term, Mastery Learning to describe how they have ‘flipped’ their classrooms inside out. Instead of lecturing in class, they have created hundreds of vodcast videos which their students view for homework. Don’t use technology in the classroom, use it before and after, outside of the classtoom. A major roadblock or barrier to the implementation of this model is that many educators do not know what to do within the classroom, what to do with that “whatever they want to do” time. The Flipped Class: Myths Vs. A professional learning community for teachers using Vodcasting in the Classroom.
U Expect participative and collaborative learning Please read this and make a commitment to participate before you decide to take one of these courses! If we do it right, we're going to make magic happen: strangers all over the world will coalesce into a learning community in 5 weeks. But this result is not guaranteed. I've done this with 15, 30, 50 students who met with me for three hours a week, face-to-face, over ten and fifteen weeks, in addition to our social media work between class meetings. I know the subject matter and will introduce, frame it, engage in discussing it. You can't participate fully without having absorbed the texts -- or at least having run them through your mind once.