It has been too long since my last blog. I have spent the past months collecting activities, attending workshops and in between a bit of cruising on the Brilliance of the Sea in the north Atlantic. I visited Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia
Flipping Stuff
One of my challenges is to take the big picture I have imagined as my new flipped classroom and put it into real concrete lesson. So, I have researched active learning for biology classes and reviewed case studies and developed learning objectives and broken my ol lecture ppt into smaller chucks of information in anticipation of making videos.
Learning Activities
I attended the second session of On Course at the end of October and began to understand more how On Course principles are used to create a lesson based on active learning. Their focus is to have a balance of activities in which different learning styles can engage in the lesson. At this point, I will exchange the term lesson for learning objective. They call these different styles the Thinker, Doer, Feeler and Innovator. The activities become your tools for teaching the learning objective. There are so many of them - 101 plus activities to teach an objective. On Course emphasizes collaborative learning rather than competitive with activities that encourage discussion and student teaching each other. The most striking piece in On Course is the emphasis on reflection and I agree. The reflection exercises are important so that the student can reflect and identify their learning.
Videos
I have to admit I was starting to think I was using the research to avoid making videos. I knew what I wanted them to look like but had a learning curve as to how to get there. Well, just in time to help me was the flipped learning workshop I attended in San Antonio. The whole workshop was about techniques for active learning, flipping the classroom and making videos....YAHOO!!!! The best couple of days to help me get "on course."
Since the workshop I have made three videos using Doceri and Camtasia and have embedded them into a Google form using Google drive and YouTube and loaded the form to my learning management system (canvas).
I have learned how to edit my videos and add animations. I use Doceri to annotate while I am recording the video. The Google form is set-up to ask student a couple of question. Their answers go into a Google spreadsheet so I can see who has watched the video and if they got the answers.....Ta DA. I am on my way. The next step is to make the videos a little more fun.
Lastly, was in-class polling software to promote active learning. I learned about a couple : Learning Catalytics and Socrative. I think I like the Learning Catalytic best but it is $10 per student and Socrative is free. Both allow students to use smartphone, tablet or notebooks to answer questions and see the result in real time during class
So, it has been a productive couple of months and I am still getting started. I think I am going to work on building the videos for a section of material and then build the active learning for that material in hopes to see a routine for the class that I can describe to my students. Oh one more thing, I am going to take a week to give them an orientation to this style of teaching and learning. Videos and flipping, activities to self assess their confidence in learning science then bring on that flipping will be better helping them to learn than the ol lecture format....still thinking about that one
Flipping out and more to come.......
