One Skill for Teachers

This week I promised my students that I will do as I asked them. Come-up with something I have not done before. True to my promise and to my own thinking about use flipped classrooms I came up with a within class activity focused on making a short instructional video. I presented some options using the iPad including using the front facing camera, the ShowMe app and a few other great options. The assignment was simple. Think of the most important strategy you taught your student this summer, design a short video reminder of it and shoot it in one take (two at the most). No editing, low expectations.

The response was stunned silence followed by "do we really have to?'s". I was a bit surprised, almost every teacher in the group said "I do  not like my voice". I get a similar reaction when I ask everyone to draw. Every student hesitates, apologizes and does her best to find a way to avoid the task. Making movies was along the same lines.

Part of it is the fear of the complete product that will be there to be judged without our ability to mediate. The other part is the fact that we fail to meet our expectations to be Bogart or Knightly. It took me a while to adjust to viewing myself on the techedge01 videos for iPad in the classroom. It was jarring at first but after a short time I got over myself and moved on. I have come to realize that I am not and will not be Bogart. I can tell you that I am too stiff, wordy and academic but I am getting better.

Video in my eyes is too good a tool to avoid using for instruction, especially when we need to individualize instruction for students at very different levels. My students reaction opened my eyes to this barrier of discomfort about performance. Maybe we all need to dabble in performance arts to let go? or just get used to making videos for instruction.

My conclusions force everyone in teacher education programs to make short videos enough to desensitize them. This way when they teach the option to supplement, support or even flip using videos will be just a few simple steps.

A Flipping Rant

Khan and Gates

No, its not what you think and it is still a clean blog. I spent some time thinking last week on flipped learning a term that is in very real danger of becoming a cliche. It started with Khan and his academy that I have discussed before and even recommended on my netcast. I have actually used a version of a flipped classroom in a methodology course I teach in the summer using the Khan academy mini lessons to help students go through the fundamental calculations in descriptive statistics. More recently Hake a prolific observer of science education has posted a series of responses to the quality of the Khan academy instructional approaches (very old fashioned really) that can be seen here. I agree with much of what's been said there but here I have another point to make.
Everyone is hailing this approach as the new silver bullet- new thinking about education that will help transform education. I have the sinking suspicion that the support for this model is actually rooted in two very irrelevant sources. The first is the observation that the instruction on the Khan academy video's is in fact very old fashioned. It is exactly the same thing that I had in Math when I went to school, the only difference is that you can watch it your time repeatedly without driving your teacher crazy.
The second reason this approach is deemed great is that it is supported by someone that has never been an educator and knows very little about learning theory. We love innovators in education that come from other realms and can show educators the light.

Students discussing the media they read at home
during Literature Circles

My rant, however, goes in a very different direction. English language arts and social studies teachers (primarily) have from the dawn of time been flipping their classrooms. They sent students home with the direction of consuming media (books, movies, photos, source documents). The  in class everyone discussed the novels, source documents and produced projects about them. Yet, this does not occur to CNN, BBC or Bill Gates. It turns out that every high-school teacher has been doing it for years. So why do we like when Khan does it? again because it is in math, because it is coming from outside education, because first he made his millions in the stock market and then he discovered education- such a sacrifice. Much more than a teacher that has skipped the getting rich part and dedicated his life to children without the benefit of earnings and Bill Gates loving embrace.
My flipping sisters and brothers who teach in flippin' ways you were there first and will still be there even after Khan fades into distant memory.