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In the Beginning

Towards the end of the 2010-2011 school year I started flipping my classroom by having students read for comprehension from the textbook and filling out a sheet of guided notes prior to coming to class.  Class time started with reviewing select problems from the section, then progressed to independent practice and group work.  Class concluded with a 4 question check for understanding students would complete on their own.

It struck me how poorly kids could read for comprehension.  Was this the fault of the textbook companies for writing content in such a boring and non engaging style?  Was this a result of our societal shift to more video and less reading?

Along came the iPad

click here from an iPad to see my first chapter

Despite being a newbie to all things Apple I jumped right into creating content for my students using pages and exporting to epub files.  I loved it and I truly thought it was great, there was text, images, videos, and links to websites.  The interactive of the ibooks was twice that of a regular textbook and I thought for sure this opened up multiple channels of communication for the learner.
However, students seemed to really struggle with reading for comprehension and knowing what the desired outcomes where for each section. Was there a breakdown in the ebook or was there a more deeply rooted issue that was ingrained in the learning philosophy of our students?  

There were multiple areas of change concurrently taking place.  First of all these students were freshman and coming into the high school environment was new to them.  The issue iPads was completely new to all students but to freshman equipped with trapper keepers for every subject the issue of digital organization was confusing.  These students wanted and needed a physical form of homework in front of them.  All this said I knew this year was going to be more than teaching about math.  I knew I would have to focus my students on unlearning their bad habits of sitting and getting information.  I knew it would be a fight to transform their belief that learning was passive and instill in them personal responsibility of their learning and taking an active role in their education.

Despite believing this and in the interest of easing students into these changes I cut back on text, images, and links, and focused solely on video.  I was convinced that students were struggling with the new style of learning, they weren't ready to be responsible for "learning" the material on their own.  They needed a more structured teacher directed lesson in which they were told exactly what to write down and where to write it.  Students were asked to view vodcast lectures at night, and to come to class prepared to talk about that content the following day. However, there were issues, just like when you assign a problem set with homework you'll have those students that don't do their homework.  Same was true here even though the homework was just to watch a video and fill in the notes.  All flip teachers have been here before.

Was this really flipped instruction?  Was this really benefiting students?  Was this at all removing the teacher from the role of the sage on the stage?  Or was this just re inventing the traditional classroom lecture on a nice shiny device?

Test run on Textbook App

Right before the end of our semester we decided to flip our class using only the free sample of the textbook app that our textbook company provided in the app store.  All other factors remained constant, the only difference there was no guided video notes from the teachers, only those videos that were done by the app creators.  Students were given instructions on how to navigate the app and how to interact with it then set free to move through the chapter. You can read my blog post found here but essentially this is what we found:

• using the app was equivalent to having the students use the online site and read the textbook
• students struggled to piece together the video examples with their guided notes
• the app took up huge amounts of space on the iPad (1+ GB for one chapter)
• students felt disconnected from their teacher due to the fact the videos featured a teacher they had no personal relationship with.
• Final thoughts were sealed after meeting with our textbook rep- it was going to cost $49 per app for students for a 6 year period if we purchased the app through them.  This would mean that student devices would need the app loaded onto their device in some way other than downloading from the app store.  Can you imagine connecting 2000 devices one at a time or even 30 at a time, multiple times a year to load the next chapter or semester of materials on?   This seemed all to unpractical.  There has to be a better solution, a better method of delivering and interacting with content,

iBooks Author and the Mastery Flipclass

In addition to making the shift to using iBooks Author to create more interactive content, I also moved to the Mastery Flipped class methodology.

Under this methodology students were no longer expected to be on the same page on the same day. They all received a unit roadmap with certain checkpoints along the way.  The checkpoints served as accountability for students.  The order of their learning took on the form of reading/viewing content in ibooks, practicing a problem set, self correcting this problem set, passing an online formative assessment with an 80% or better, then completing a 4 question paper and pencil quiz- this grade went into the grade book.  If they received less a 2.5/4 then students would complete a reteach worksheet provided by our textbook company.  Students were encouraged to work in groups of 2-3 they were encouraged to create Showme videos and post them to Edmodo for their classmates to view and review.

The beginning of class was a time to check in and connect the content students (majority of students) were working on to real life problems.  For example, during our unit on surface area and volume we took time to calculate the volume of plastic saved by bottling companies when they went to a smaller sized screw cap.  We took time to process why this was important and what our place and math's place was in this real world connection.  Often times we employed apps such as Socrative, Poll Everywhere, or Nearpod to gain student data.

Following a large group check in, students would break up and work on problem sets, projects, or quizzes and tests, while I (the teacher) went around to each student and group and checked in.  Some days were high demand teacher days and I found myself quickly adopting the "ask 3 then me" rule.  Other days students did not have a lot of questions, but overall I found myself spending more time with students working 1 on 1 or 1 on 3 way more than in the past when I would lecture and spend little time problem solving.

Some days class was loud and crazy and I fought my inclinations to quiet the crowd and keep things orderly.  Yes, some students need that peace and quiet to concentrate and focus, while others seem to thrive in the noise.  Other days I would have pockets of students taking quizzes and tests and therefore would need to keep the classroom environment quiet so as to not compromise that testing environment.  Anything that went in the grade book was done by the individual student in class on paper and pencil and was hand graded by me.  I really wanted to accurately measure my students understanding and felt that online assessments while great for formative evaluations and immediate feedback did not provide insight into a students thought process and problem solving techniques.

Students were shedding the layers of passive learning, sit and get philosophy, and starting to take responsibility of their learning.  Those motivated students were moving through the content at accelerated paces.  These students were given opportunities to extend their learning by completing non traditional content related projects. While those who needed extra time, had busy schedules, or just learned less quickly than others were supported in this and still moved through the materials.  Unfortunately, there were those students who chose to do absolutely nothing.  There were students who, no matter what you did or how you motivated them, they dug their heels in and refused to take on the responsibility, they chose to fail.  The good news in this is, out of the 95% of students who did chose to work in this setting all of them passed the course.

A few years ago I studied Classroom Presenter 3 and wrote my masters thesis on tech enhanced interactive lectures. CP3 is an amazing piece of open source software that creates a dynamic interactive student centered conversation in the classroom and in my opinion would make a killer app for the iPad (anyone want to develop it?) The incredible thing about CP3 is that it takes a teacher centered static powerpoint and allows for student input, instant feedback, and an ability to diverge from the linear path of a ppt slide show.

One of the many great ways to transform our learning environment through iPad integration is in the way of gathering real time student artifacts and using it to direct face to face classroom discussions. Real time response systems, clickers, or classroom response systems have been around for awhile now and used to be tied to a remote control type device.

Since then this instantaneous response system has evolved to web-based response systems and iPad compatible apps. Using these sites and apps gives every student a voice in responding to questions and provides teachers real time feedback based directly on student understanding. Imagine how this can transform our face to face time with students?

Consider a few uses: students complete a lecture or video then navigate to a Google form and answer five questions based off the content. The teacher can pull up the spreadsheet of responses and see immediately what conceptions students are forming and can scaffold instruction accordingly.

Or perhaps students are directed to the teachers Poll Everywhere site at the beginning of class for a 5 question warm up based off of the previous day's content. In real time responses are aggregate on the screen giving the teacher data and understanding of what their students are understanding, from here teachers can regroup their class to spend more time with those who need it and allow those who don't need reinforcing the opportunity to work ahead independently.

There are many great ways to collect student artifacts and use them to drive your instructional time Survey Monkey, Question Press, Poll Daddy, and thatquiz are all web-site based tools that offer some sort of free or educational plan. As well there are iPad/iPod apps that provide similar experiences and student data. Try using one of the above sites or find a great app and see what it tells you about your students understanding. Or, even better, show the class results to your students (in a safe way) to allow them to see what they are and are not understanding. Let their conceptions drive your instruction and their learning.

One week at it and the fog in the classroom is starting to clear. It feels like I have been a completely gang tackled by a bunch of hardware, software, and webware thugs. My desk is a mess with lose papers, software disks, ipads (students and teachers), styli, pens, pencils, cords, chargers... it is evident that I am in a struggle with a digital/analogue identity crisis.

Where are these files? Are they printed? Do they need to be printed?
Can students access this file just using the iPad? Can they edit this file?
Can they organize their iPad so that they know where to find these files?
How do I receive these files back from students with their annotations?
How do I grade digital student artifacts? Do I really want 150 emails today?
Does doing this analogue make better sense for the sake of best practice?

These are just a few of the questions that I find myself asking as I slowly morph from analogue to digital. In an attempt to move to the digital world and connect our learners in a virtual classroom my classes are meeting and communicating on Edmodo- ahhh yes! math class is no longer 58 minutes. In addition, I have built a wiki for just my geometry classes. Biting off more than I can chew is a habit of mine and I don't want to start another project that I don't finish...my wife wouldn't be happy even if it isn't going on the living room wall.

Edmodo is a social network specifically geared for education. It is not as "academic" as Moodle and not as sexy as Facebook...it could almost be seen as an offspring of the two. Some where down inside of me I am scared that students will reject this attempt to meet them in their own world and see through the "trick"of getting them to learn in a place they already are. But I am quite passionate about engaging students on their turf, showing them that they are learning where ever they are and that together we as a community we construct meaning and knowledge about life.

So I feel compelled to push this method of learning...for now. The smallest glimpses of this thing working have been making me giddy... Students will post a question as plain as "what is the homework?" Another student will respond...sometimes with a snide remark like "click on the calendar link above". I smile and say to myself 'look they really do care about one another.' But in reality they are helping, they are directing, they are answering the questions, they are taking ownership...and I am removing myself from the position of sole authority.

Today I posted the links to the first set of Showme tutorials geometry students created for our first quiz review. Student created work, created to help students work... ummm I think this could be good. Check out this students first attempt: