The radio show is called “The Flip Side: Turning Learning On Its Head.”  I see the show as a place to tell the stories of Flipped Learning educators and students.  Each segment will be about ten minutes long.  In the premier episode I had a chance to talk with PBL expert Michael Gorman (@mjgorman) about how Flipped Learning and PBL connect.  I would love to hear your feedback from the show.  You can find the radio show by clicking HERE. 

So, what do you think?

Anyways:  my family and I have decided that I need to focus in on one thing.  Thus, with great regret, I handed in my resignation from my job as Lead Technology Facilitator at the Joseph Sears School here in Illinois.  It is a great school with an amazing staff which I will miss.  I have learned so much in these past two years about technology integration, professional development, leadership, friendship, and a whole host of other things.  We informed the staff this week and they have been very supportive and encouraging.  Though we are leaving the school, we plan to stay in Illinois and plan to still see my wonderful colleagues.     

Thus, I will be devoting my full energies to helping to nurture-lead-inspire the flipped learning movement.  This will mean more travel and spending more time getting to know many of you who have taken the plunge into flipped learning.  But it will also mean that when I am home, I will be home.  My wife and I plan to share our little home office as she does much of the business end of FLN while I work on other projects.  This is a scary step because I will soon be essentially without gainful employment.  I will rely on folks who want me to come and train their teachers and schools. I also have some additional writing projects I want to do (more on those later). Already I have commitments from a variety of schools and conferences where I will be working so at least for the next couple of months, we are pretty busy.   

Though scary, my wife and I are excited about this new chapter in our lives.  We are humbled that flipped learning has taken off as it has and are excited for the road that is ahead.

Thus:  If you are in need of anybody to work with your school or district, feel free to email me and we can set something up.

Overall Questions

• What is the best use of your  face-to-face class time?

• What is one lesson that you teach that is perfect for flipping?

• As you start flipping, who will you work with?

• Are you willing to give up some of the control of your classroom to your students? This is a scary thing for many teachers who like control.

• If you flip, WHAT will you do in your class now that you are not lecturing?

• Do you need additional resources since you will now have more time to do in-class higher order thinking and problem solving as a result of the extra time?

• How will you rearrange your room as you consider flipping your classroom?

• To what extent will you create vs curate your videos?

• Will you completely flip your class, or just do selected lessons?

• How will you learn more about flipped learning (books, the web)?

• How much time do you have to commit to flipping your classroom?

• How will your students access your videos?  Do you have any students who will need to access the videos when NOT connected to the internet?

• If you teach multiple classes:  Which class will you flip first?

• Have you considered moving to a Flipped-Mastery model?

Technical Questions about Video Creation:

• What software will you use to make your videos?

• Do you need any hardware like a better microphone or a tablet to write with?

• Where will you post your videos? (YouTube? Somewhere else?)

• How will you link your videos from your Learning Management System?

Classroom Questions

• How will you monitor if the students watched the video?

• How will you grade their watching of the videos?

• How will you build in interactivity into your video lessons?  (A Google form?  Notes on paper? a A question? Something else?)

• What are you going to do when a student doesn't watch your video?

• How will you change your assessment as a result of flipping your class?

• How will you communicate what you are doing with your administration?

• How will you communicate what you are doing with your students?

• How will you communicate what you are doing with your parents?

Before we talk about information overload, let's look at curriculum.  You see, I have been thinking lately about WHAT we teach our students. For many years what we teach has been determined by groups of adults who sit on committees and determine what information is important and what information isn’t.  If it makes it in the textbooks, the curriculum guides, and the standards, then it gets taught.  If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t get taught.  And, by implication, it isn’t important.

I have been one of those adults who helped determine state content standards.  When I did this, we gathered content experts from all fields and asked them to tell us what was important so that we could fashion curriculum.  The problem with this approach is that everybody we asked thought that their field was important.  What resulted was a bloated curriculum that has too much content and is impossible to teach in the time allotted.  I know the common core is supposed to address some of these issues, and my estimation, it is a good start.  But we still have too much to teach.  I think of it much like the graph below.  

In my experience working with teachers, they feel the weight of too much curriculum.   They feel they are doing their students a disservice by cramming it all into their limited class time.  There is a growing angst among educators about too many expectations with limited time and resources.

So WHAT should we be teaching? Are we teaching too much?  Shouldn’t we reconsider the WHAT of teaching and explore something different?  How should this look?  

Here is my two cents worth:  I believe we should abandon roughly 20% of what we teach.  I am not saying we should get rid of years of curriculum development and work, but we need to cut down on what we teach so that students can get to deeper learning experiences.  We collectively need to make hard choices about WHAT truly is and is not important.

Then, with the additional 20% time, I propose that we give students choices to learn what THEY want to learn.  If we teach only 1% of knowledge (it is probably much less than this), each student needs the right to explore their passions and interests in this 20% time.  This is not a new idea with me.  I first read about the 20% rule in Dan Pink's book Drive.

This is where technology and the information-saturated society we live in comes into play.  Since information is so easy to obtain, we can leverage technology to tap into students' passions.  If they love to fix a car, or study jaguars, or cooking, or dogs, or nanotechnology, or famous artists, or….. I think you get the picture.  Let's allow students to explore what they want to learn about.  Let's fashion projects and activities which harness their innate curiosity about the world.  Let's fuel their curiosity to a raging flame that will never go out.  

Could this happen?  You bet!  It would take a commitment by policy makers, curriculum coordinators, teachers, and yes, students.  This requires the entire community to get together and start the conversation about changing WHAT we teach.

Our students deserve the opportunity to explore THEIR passions and interests.  What do you think?  What are some practical ways we can begin implementing this into our schools even now?  

Lets introduce

My name is Stefan van der Weide and I’m a teacher in social studies at Stad & Esch. The school is situated in Meppel, the Netherlands. I mainly teach to kids in the age of 14 to 16 years old. Every kid has his/hers own MacBook. And this is my story about the flipped classroom.

Reason to flip

In 2008 my school decided the wanted to start with a laptop for every student. This already implied a major change. In the Netherlands there is a strong position for publishers of educational books. In Dutch most teachers refer to them as ‘method’, because the book will deliver a full program for an entire school year. My schools concept: ditch the books and go digital. Every teacher was given a MacBook and we started introducing the MacBooks in the first year of our school (kids age ±12 years old). In first we used a combination of computer and books. You can’t expect teachers to replace everything in a couple of months, so time for the transition was given. A jump forward to 2010. Students complained about teachers not using there Macs enough. So I thought: ‘At least I’ll give them the opportunity to view the presentations again’. I used our digital school environment (Teletop, comparable to, for example, Blackboard) to give students access to the presentation. First as pdf-s but my students made a good point: ‘I can’t remember what your explanation was when I am viewing the presentation’. Well, what can you do? You want the best for your students, so I started recording my presentations. The first one was absolutely horrible as I struggled with the text and the syncing of sound and image. So what do you do when you are confronted with a problem these days? You turn to Google. I quickly figured out the technical side of it. But I also found something else: a way of teaching called ‘the flipped classroom’. Put it in my ‘read later list’. I kept recording my presentations and quickly had a huge database of videos on YouTube. Problems during lessons hinted me that I had to change something. Students didn’t pay any attention when I was explaining material to them. Instead of getting angry, I asked them why they didn’t pay attention and started talking to classmates. Answer: why should I listen if I can watch the explanation anytime I want? They were 100% right. But since it was already the end of the school year I didn’t change it for the last couple of weeks.

Flipping my class

During the summer holiday I finally reopened my ‘read later list’. I started reading the website and searched more about it on Google: the flipped classroom. It was ‘love at first sight’. Organizing the flip took a lot of holidaytime but I couldn’t resist. Introducing the flipped class to my students was easy. They picked up the concept with amazing ease. I had made an educated guess on the number of different levels I would encounter in my lessons. Three levels would cover it, I thought. And it looked that way for about a month. But the pace and the level of understanding became more diverse every lesson. In fact every student has his of hers own pace and level of comprehension. Not to mention all the different styles in which students learn. I had to do something and turned to Twitter for help. Other Dutch flippers pointed me towards the flipped mastery system. It seemed to make a lot of sense. So approached it the same way I approached making the videos: just do it. Students had a lot of questions when I introduced all sorts of assessments and even protested when I gave them more (and more difficult) assignments at different levels. Like children do, they quickly adapted and mastered the mastery system. It also came with some added bonuses: higher motivation, using their creativity more and seeing a lot of kids being passionate about the way they learned. Believe, things go wrong all the time and there’s still lots of things that need improvement, but we (no more ‘I’) will solve them when we encounter them. And how about your grades? Well, the are up by an average of 10%. Motivation even more than that. I encourage my students frequently to give their opinion about the classes, assignments and assessments.

If there’s any advise to be given it’s this:

• Just do it, if you don’t start you’ll be stuck forever
• Get your kids involved, use their technological knowhow
• Get colleagues involved.

And enjoy teaching, because your students will need you more than ever.

Stefan van der Weide

You know those perfectly orchestrated moments on television or in movies—the ones where the rain is drizzling down the car window and as the camera peers through the windshield we see a woman, hand half-covering her pained expression, tears streaming down her contorted face.  If we weren’t bludgeoned by the crescendo of violins, we’d be privy to her guttural sobs—we think, good lord, who cries like that?!

Well, apparently I do (minus the soundtrack), especially after a day where exhaustion doesn’t even begin to describe the slow evisceration of my spirit.

I spent the summer of 2012 eagerly awaiting the fall.  I had just finished the previous year as ELA department chair, HS tech mentor, and 1 out of 5 teachers who participated in a pilot for use of iPads in the classroom.  In addition, I had been asked to give an iPad presentation in July at the Statewide Conference on the Education of the Deaf.  Though I was exhausted, it was an invigorating exhaustion, the kind that revs you up and readies you for the next challenge.  I had believed that I had found my next challenge after connecting with Cheryl Morris, of the famed Thomasson Morris Instruction.  After reading her blog and watching videos of the duo demonstrating writing process, I knew I had to send her and Andrew an email.  She responded right away and even took the time to subtitle one of her videos for me so that I could get an idea of how to start my own videos.  She basically gave me a crash course in her flipped method and I was hooked. 

I started making my own videos and I was so excited to begin the year.  Then pre-service began and policy changes were announced, new initiatives explained, and it became clear that I was not going to have time to make videos.  It was the fall in which I attempted to do it all—I was going to become the flippin’ Queen, master all of the new initiatives, complete all administration mandates on time, convince the curriculum team to flip Professional Development, and make good on my promise to my husband not to bring work home.  I had bit off way more than I could chew.  By December, I was beyond burnt out—after only 7 years, I was absolutely, positively certain that this was my last year of teaching.  So, I sat in my car and cried.

While I like to say that I began flipping my classroom that first day of school, true flip did not happen until I found my PLN on Twitter over Christmas break.  I started out simply following Cheryl and Andrew and whomever else they followed.  I lurked and basked on their every tweet like some fanatic groupie.  I was encouraged to join #flipclass chat as well as check out the flipclass Ning. At first I was overwhelmed.  It seemed as if everyone was doing phenomenal things with the flipped concept and here I was still making mediocre grammar videos at best.  It was during #flipclass chat that I started to understand what flipclass really means. 

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE VIDEOS!

It really isn’t.  Flip class is a mindset.  Its willingness from the teacher to let go of the classroom and hand it over to the student.  I will not insult your intelligence and say that teachers don’t really know what student learning looks like.  I think we do, but often we assume that we need to be the directors.  We have built ourselves up through education, certification, and years of experience to envisioning ourselves as academic tour guides.  There is nothing wrong with having a tour guide, but sometimes learning comes from exploring on your own and having someone there to answer questions when you are ready to learn more.  We have to find that balance between directing and facilitating.  Engaging in discussion with fellow flippers has helped me understand what student-centered really means.  By January I was making the shift to eliminating homework.  I was focusing on allowing students to move through the curriculum at their own pace (within reason).  I was making myself more available to students for 1:1 help.  I also read more about standards-based grading and decided to put my energy into learning more about my students and their needs by ASKING them (rather than relying on the paperwork or assessment results that I’m given at the beginning of the year). 

I don’t consider myself a flippin’ Queen yet, but I’m making small steps and I have to say that post-spring break, I’m smiling more.  Maya Angelou said, during CUE13, that “Teachers are rainbows in the clouds.” Teachers might be the one positive influence in as tudent's life.   However, sometimes, Teachers need to find rainbows for themselves.  The most beautiful rainbows tend to show after the darkest of storms.  So, don’t be afraid to give flipping a try.  There are a variety of ways to do it and a variety of colleagues willing to help get you started.  Join us on Twitter for #flipclass to learn more! 

Tamara Copeland-Samaripa is a high school English teacher at a School for the Deaf.  She is also a technology mentor who loves to share new and innovative ways to use technology in the classroom.  Recently she has begun blogging as a way to reflect on her experience with flipped classroom.  you can view her blog at http://tcsamaripa.wordpress.com!

We know how critical the dialogue between the teacher and the student is, and how easily communication can be a breakthrough or a breakdown in the success for the students. The relationship between how the educator conducts class time and homework is a complicated algorithm, depending on precision and reasoning.  I’ve had a blog on flipped learning for quite some time, but recently I asked guest bloggers to offer a range of different voices.  One voice we don’t often hear from is the student perspective so I asked my daughter, who often co-presents with me, to write a blog from her perspective. Below is her unique take on flipped learning.

What is flipped learning, you may ask?  It is where learning is personalized to the student and students takes ownership of their learning. Thus it makes perfect sense to bring in the student perspective to keep the flipped conversation going.  So I’d like to introduce my daughter, Kaitie Bergmann. Have a look at what she has to say…

“I found my years in a flipped class environment to be more to me than just a chemistry class. I learned so much more than chemical equations and plate tectonics. I learned how to learn. While I was a student at the Woodland Park High School, in Colorado, I took two flipped classes. I was in honors freshman earth & space science and then my sophomore year I took flipped chemistry. I’m lucky to have a sense of both the flipped and traditional classrooms to see how much I have taken from the experience.
   
For the first time ever I had the ability to “pause the teacher” while watching the lectures online. Working on my own timetable allowed me to explore learning styles and techniques, and to hone in on the way that I learn best. The tailorability of the flipped classroom was cool as well because I saw my peers learning in their own style (for example, watching the videos at two times the speed when they got it, or  conversely watching the videos multiple times) and excelling in the class.

Woodland Park High School Student Watching a Podcast

One of the coolest things that came out of the flipped-mastery classroom for me was the ability to step up and take responsibility for my own learning at a pace that worked for me. I got to choose when to listen to a lecture, decide what was the best use of my class time, such conducting a lab, doing a worksheet, asking for help, or working in a small group, and then work towards the weekly stated goals.
   
Another reason I enjoy the flipped class so much is the stress-free environment it creates. I cannot remember a time when I was stressed out about my flipped chemistry classes. I most definitely have been stressed about other classes that are not taught in the flipped classroom model, and I looked forward to my flipped class. I always knew I could get the help I needed, take the tests multiple times, and I knew what I needed to complete and learn by the end of the week. I see so many students in high school who stress way to much and I think that the flipped classroom can be part of the answer to that overload of homework-related stress.
   
The bottom line is that I learned in the flipped classroom. And that learning that occurred helped me get through many classes in high school, simply by learning how to learn. I hope that you enjoyed hearing from a student as much as I enjoyed sharing.  I’m going to send this back over to my dad for his final thoughts.”

Woodland Park High School Students Working in a Flipped-Mastery Classroom

And there you have it.  Students of every grade level and all subject areas are energized by the concept of flipped learning. I recently presented a webinar called  Engaging Struggling Students in a Flipped Classroom along with Aaron Sams, co-author of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. To learn more about what it means to make the shift to a flipped classroom visit this video from a few year’s back for a closer look at Woodland Park High School.

-Jon (educator, author and flipped learning pioneer) and Kaitie Bergmann (high school senior) continue to present on the roles of teacher and student in a flipped classroom and will be speaking in Iceland this spring.  Continue the conversation at the Flipped Learning Network Ning, a free Community of Learning with over 11,000 members taking on Flipped Learning. Also a new blended learning course for educators will debut in April. Read more now.