I will – I am planning to upgrade to VideoPress soon and will be able to do that. Much of the secret to getting it down to 2 minutes or so is editing out pauses, time required to write things out, and getting rid of things I say that I don’t really need to say. Hopefully I get better at it, because at the moment, it is still a huge ratio of time in:video out!

Hi,

I completely agree that I want to have more observations of how this is working. I suspect you are right – that some may be more off-task than I think, and I am looking for ways to prevent this. The class where this is really happening has 20 students in it (my biggest class) and I am finding that while I am weaving in and out of the tables throughout the period, there are periods and groups that are less productive than others. On the whole though, since I am spending less time talking, I think there is more net time spent working, and that is a major advantage to doing things this way.

Flipping doesn’t have to be videos for homework and homework in class – the general idea behind it is flipping the relationship and responsibility between students and teachers relative to learning. I like the philosophy that I can put resources together for students to use to work toward specific goals. Some of those are videos. Other resources include interesting problems and activities during class that help them work with definitions and concepts to make them richer than they would be just listening to me talk. Some of them do read websites and example problems from the textbook, though that is not admittedly as much as I would like. I agree that reading textbooks is a skill that we have been edging away from since when I was in high school.

As of now, there aren’t videos I’m having them watch for homework. I may try this for Calculus as we move into our next unit, but I am more excited about putting together the resources for students to learn, and then setting them off as they do so. They likely need me to explain ideas less than they think, and can benefit more from spending time working through problems than they would having me introduce an idea perfectly in a lecture format.

Thanks for the comments!

Evan

Thanks – it is really exciting. I’m already finding ways to make it better in talking with students and asking them questions during the class period. The energy is invigorating, and makes me not want to go back the other way. The only advantage I have is small classes, so I can have good conversations with every student multiple times during the class period.

I am finding that to be the case more and more as I try to reduce my own direct instruction. It definitely makes a difference having the students do things on their own and then have things to share when we see them in discussion as a group. They otherwise have only prior knowledge to bring into the discussion, and in many cases, that really isn’t that interesting to them aside from the potential novelty of having seen something before. My biggest bad habit in doing things this way is talking too much before cutting them lose to do the activity. This is why the videos are doing good things for me – I have two minutes to make my case, and then the students are off working on whatever task I give them.

You are absolutely right about flipped classrooms working that way. I try in my videos to include one or two activities or questions that the students can interact with right there. Then, as I am circulating to work with students, I have something specific to engage them on, and it’s no surprise to them what I am asking.

I am finding places in my classes where I am talking too little, and the students could benefit more from being shown an example rather than discovering things entirely on their own. I am lucky to have students that (when asked) are honest enough to tell me what is and is not working.

Thanks for the comments!

Evan

The teacher starts the lesson by “teaching” a new concept. This teaching usually involved some combination of explaining and asking questions to check for understanding. During this time, the class is usually very quiet, a few students are misbehaving, and a few look like they are taking naps with their eyes open. After teaching the concept, the teacher gives the students an activity to explore the concept further. The students work independently, in pairs, with the teacher, whatever it takes. Finally, the teacher calls the students back together and debriefs the activity they just completed and summarizes the key concepts from the lesson. The amazing thing is that consistently the class is more talkative and engaged during this second teacher-led portion of the lesson.

The lesson I learned from this is that students love to talk and they are happy to talk, but they have to have some connection with what is going on in the lesson. If you’re introducing something brand new to them at the beginning of the lesson in a direct-teacher sort of way, don’t be surprised if they have very little to say. But give them some interesting problems to solve that involve that concept, and they will then have a shared experience to talk about as a whole class. In the rooms I’ve observed, it’s like night and day.

It sounds like the flipped classroom idea is leveraging this experience by having students engage with the content on their own through videos. That way once they’re back with the teacher and other students they have already made a connection to the content and they’re ready to talk about it and ask questions. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with teachers talking necessarily; they just need to think about when they’re doing it.

I gather from your bullet points that the videos are being watched in class rather than at home before class. I thought the point of flipping was that the videos (and things for them to write down while watching) would be done as homework so that no class time need be spent on introducing topics that are video-worthy. Are you giving them videos to watch before class as well? One problem I have with this approach is that they don’t learn to read the book. To appeal to multiple learning styles, I’d think some combination of having them read and having them watch a video would be best, although I haven’t thought much about which topics would be best to introduce through which medium. I think both text and video are here to stay, so it is important to get students used to acquiring knowledge through both media.

Thanks for an interesting and revealing post.