This is my first year working in a High School (16 years in Elementary). I am working everyday with teachers to bring their ideas for integration to life. I don’t know if my High School is similar to other schools in the nation, but I can say that I have been inspired by how open-minded they are to creating Blended learning environments. The majority of the teachers I work with see how valuable sharing digital content with their students is becoming. This includes basic examples of sharing calendar events and class notes/materials (via Google Calendar & Sites) and intermediate examples of student created content- creating their own class webpage/portfolio (via Google Sites), collaboration using Google Docs and participating in Forum discussions (via Schoology). Teachers are expanding their comfort zones by extending their classrooms to the web.
The Flipped Classroom is something that I have been reading about and think it is a worthy direction for any teacher feeling the lack of enough instructional hours in their classroom. In my opinion, it would be a simple shift for many of the teachers to “flip” what they are doing. Instead of sharing classnotes/powerpoints/study guides after the content is taught, give access to it before. This might be some work upfront (creating PPTs with audio of class lectures, finding/sharing videos that would not be shared in class, setting the expectations and procedures for students to actually be prepared for this differnet type of classroom environment), but it would eventually yield results. Once students being to “front load’ their instruction outside of the classroom, the more collaboration, project based learning and all the good stuff many teachers feel they don’t have the time to do can happen.
I am working with a gifted History teacher that is Flipping his classroom (without even knowing that there is a lot of buzz already about it). We are working together to create online versions of his powerpoints w/audio using Slideshare/Slidecast. These powerpoints will include primary source images and many videos to provide the class content online. Our next step is to also provide these resources in a mobile format (since all kids have their cell phones).
This teacher’s journey is very inspiring to me. I consider myself lucky to be able to support his ideas and am excited for the future.
Below is an Infographic I found via my PLN (Reeder App >Free Technology or Teachers Blog by @rmbyrne >Pinterest.com > Cool Infographics 2011 gallery . One RSS feed headline, lead me to 45 minutes of exploring and learning…love it.
I am a huge fan of Infographics. I am collecting awesome infographics to hopefully use to teach an upcoming lesson to the HS Journalism class/Online HS newspaper that I co-sponsor. More and more of the students want to graphically represent the articles they are creating. Check out my collection of Infographics and resource sites @http://www.diigo.com/user/plan3t_t3ch/infographics
@Plan3t_t3ch 