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It's a flipping snow day!!

1/27/2015

There was no mystery about this one. Sometimes we can't be sure what the superintendent will do, but on Monday morning everybody at school was sure that we wouldn't see each other on Tuesday. And the next day looks unlikely too....

But I can still teach my students today! I posted a new video assignment yesterday, and announced during class that we will have a quiz on Thursday even if the Blizzard of '15 cancels two consecutive school days. The webpage stats report the next assignment has 24 hits and the video already has 32 views (at 3PM). The comment section shows several students discussing federalism and the steps of how a bill becomes a law. I will jump into the conversation soon, but sometimes I prefer to just watch how students interact and inform each other....

Of course, if we had a power outage today then I would have to extend the assignment. As far as I know, that seems unnecessary, but I think that's a fair reason for postponement. A few students rely on special ed support and/or computer use during the school day -- like everything else, flipping doesn't work for 100%. I will have to let them watch the video during the in-class quiz time, and assess their understanding later. (In a conventional system, there would be some students who left their binder or textbook behind and would have a similar problem.)

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Making parents happy!

1/21/2015

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https://www.cwist.com/blog/help-your-child-complete-homework-assignments/

Every January, my school devotes our Tuesday after-school meeting times to brief teacher conferences: 15-minute slots for parents to meet the team of four teachers. Of the 18 conferences we've had so far this month, seven parents thanked me directly for providing online instructional videos. "Oh, I already know you," said one parent when I introduced myself. "I've seen you and heard you on my son's computer screen." Another mother said, "I'm learning new things about American history, too!"

Here is a big benefit of flipping: parents can see exactly how and what I teach their children. The goal of almost every homework assignment is crystal clear. Students need to know and understand the main points of the 10-minute-or-so video presentation. Didn't get it? The first step should be to watch it again. Do you really want to be an involved parent? Then you can watch it too and help quiz him/her on the information! The scene on the right will hopefully never occur. (Or at least it won't be my fault!)
As a parent of a 4th and 6th grader, I would LOVE to know more about how my children learned math techniques like factoring, or scientific processes. Otherwise I have to rely on my own memory of those topics when homework troubles arise.

Flipping takes effort to execute, but it really helps keep parents off my back!
Between last year and this year, I have received exactly four parent complaints about the flipping technique (out of almost 200 students). In three of those cases, many other home and family issues were involved. It wasn't really about the flipping; my unusual method was an easy target and scapegoat to divert from other factors. In the other case, there was a fairly legitimate computer access concern which we resolved with in-school special education services and some deadline extensions.

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A simpler way to make good video lessons ... ?

1/17/2015

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This week I figured out a new way to produce short video lessons. My students had a hard time absorbing information from some professional videos that I recently assigned. For my next topic (the Constitution Convention), I decided to make a basic-but-educationally-adequate. Here is how I did it:

1. I typed a script of talking points with key words, dates, phrases, etc. for the presentation.

2. Then I opened a new iMovie project and chose the "Scrolling Credits" text option. I picked an appropriate time period of about 1 minute and pasted the script of ONE question topic into the credits. (If you align the text on the left, then you'll have enough space on the right half for step 5.) I repeated this process for the other script topics, each with a different background color to show transition. All of that took me about 5 minutes.

3. Next, I exported that simple movie and ate more breakfast cereal. (It was about 6:15 AM.)

4. When that was finished, I set up iMovie to import from my laptop camera (but I could have used any recording equipment). Then, at the same moment, I clicked 'play' on the text movie AND started the camera. So during the recording I was talking about the words I could see on the screen. This helped me to stay brief and on-topic -- no time for rambling today!

5. It took about 15 minutes in iMovie to add my camera clips to the "scrolling credits." I used the picture-in-picture to place my handsome self on the right side. Now you can see/hear me talking to you, while some key words appear on the left-hand side. The finished product is posted below. You see a fancy shirt on top, but I have pajama pants down below...

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A few words in praise of Schoology

1/17/2015

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You can post videos anywhere you like, and if you borrow other people's videos then you can just post links on your teaching webpage. My teaching partner and I spent most of last year using a regular GoogleSite to update video links, post due dates, etc. That being said, I highly recommend Schoology as a learning platform. The Facebook-ish interface is familiar to most secondary students, and it has many other helpful features too, like the discussion forums. I love the gradebook and ability for students to submit assignments.
This is not an advertisement for Schoology, and they don't pay me to compliment them. Here I will post just a couple examples of how I have used it recently:

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Beating the "Long-Term Project Blues"

1/10/2015

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A major reason why we started flipping was to do more cool projects.

I remember many problems that I used to have with long-term project assignments:

"Our computer printer broke / ran out of ink / spontaneously combusted."
"It got crumpled / wet / smudged / ripped on my way to school!"
"I thought I emailed it to you."
"Oh, we had a project due today?"

And even if they did bring the project on-time, you soon discover that:

he/she totally misinterpreted the assignment
it looks super, but does not really show understanding of the concept or topic
the file format that he/she used can't work on your computer
it does show good understanding, but the appearance is so weak that it can't earn more than a B- and that doesn't seem fair and now life isn't fair and why is everything always so hard?!*

You can prevent all the problems above by having students produce their work in the classroom and/or computer lab. That lets the teacher check in more regularly with students to keep them on-track and on-schedule.

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It's a flipping snow day!!

Making parents happy!

A simpler way to make good video lessons ... ?

A few words in praise of Schoology

Beating the "Long-Term Project Blues"

Who is this flipping guy?!

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