Ask your child's teachers to FLIP the classroom

To help your kids with tests, get them teachers who use the FLIPPED CLASSROOM.

How to make a video for the Flipped Classroom

Five Things That I learned from Lodge McCammon and Katie Gimbar

What are the benefits of using video in the classroom?

1.  The teacher can capture on video the essential points that they want to communicate.

2.  The video camera can be used to capture performances of understanding by students when they achieve mastery.

3.  The video can capture stages of development of understanding.  Student can review the videos and improve their performances (and understanding and mastery)

4.  Students who miss a class (illness or who were absent for some reason) can catch up

5.  Students who are ready to move ahead of the rest of the class can work independently.

So, how do we get started?  

What tips can we give to teachers who are going to make their first videos to flip their classrooms?

How can we make the video in one take?   How can we save time?   What materials do we need?

Materials

A white board that slides

A page of white paper will work, too.

Make the posters BEFORE you start the video.   

Use a tripod.

Sit close enough so there is not an echo in the room.

Make the poster or frame fit the frame of the camera.   This means that the typical 24" by 36" vertical (portrait" poster needs to be rotated 90 degrees to be in landscape.

Bringing the Flipped Classroom to The Digital Divide

I'm particularly interested in spreading the flipped classroom to schools that do not have access to the Internet.  How can the flipped classroom be used in Cuba and rural areas where students can't get on youtube because they don't have a computer at home?  

The in-school watching center:  In developing countries where it is not possible for teachers to distribute the "flipped" classroom video via Youtube, there could be a media center where the community can come to watch materials.   Aleph Molinari has an elegant alternative to the one-laptop-per-child proposal.   Molinari points out that giving a laptop to a child might appear to be a good idea, since you can bring the digital world to that child's family.  Unfortunately, you also impose unintended new costs to the family:  what if the laptop is stolen?  Electricity is needed (an added cost).  What happens when the computer gets a virus and the school does not provide computer maintenance?  What is the cost of getting internet to the child at home?  What if the computer is dropped?    Molinari estimates that the resources for 20 laptops (enough for twenty families) would be better invested in a community computer center of 20 computers that could be open with a person on staff to train families in the use of the computers.   Giving technology is not the same as fully guiding the students (and their families) in the use of the technology.  The community center would provide that service (which would relieve the school of that responsibility).   In his presentation he talked about "urban acupuncture."  Instead of spreading 1650 computers in 1650 families, his program set up over 100 community centers as "nodes" with the same number of computers.  Like an acupuncture needle that hits a strategic point in the human nervous system, the computer center serves a neighborhood of families with just a few computers.    The centers in his program in Morelos, Mexico reached 140,000 users, of which 25% (34,000 students) went through a 72-hour training program to become "digital citizens," capable of using the internet and word processing software to improve their lives.  For more about the benefits of the in-school or near-school computer center, search on youtube "Molinari digital divide" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaxCRnZ_CLg    

The TV-at-home solution:  In homes that have electricity and a television, there is a device that attaches to a standard TV that allows videos on a USB flash drive or a memory card to be viewed on the TV.  The device is called "a digital media player for USB drives and SD Flash Cards"

So, after we have decided how to get the videos to the students (either through at-home viewers or through a community center), what guidance do we have about how best to format those videos?  What is the ideal length and how much information should be included in each video?  How much editing is needed to create a video?  What is the most time-efficient way for teachers to record videos to flip their classrooms?

What can we learn from Katie Gimbar's presentation about Flipped Classroom?

Search this phrase "Why I flipped my classroom Katie Gimbar"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aGuLuipTwg  This is the four-minute video that the reader ought to watch before continuing to read this review.  (Pause.)

.... Welcome back.  Let's make a list of what someone who has never made a video for a flipped classroom can pick up from this video:

1.  We can do better:  Katie Gimbar starts by reminding us how most teachers are currently teaching.  Teaching to the middle, with some students bored and ready to move to the next subject and other students confused and needing support.  Her graphic with the sleeping kids and the kids with question marks should be on the wall of every classroom.

2.  Simple (shot in one take):  Notice how she created a video with virtually no edits or "post production" changes.   The key is preparation and the set up.

3.  Variety:   She has four boards in two minutes, creating a change of view .   Lodge McCammon, whose youtube channel hosts Katie Gimbar's video titled "Why I flipped", has a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PcSafUTNd8 which has five panels in 85 seconds (17 seconds per panel).   

4.  Eye contact:  she looks the viewers in the eye, engaging our attention.  This is psychologically clever because it reinforces good listening behavior.   in a face to face, if we students look at the teacher, we signal that we are ready for the next piece of information.   

5.  Notice her non-verbal communication skills.  Her hand movements and positions support the message.  Like a bouncing ball for a sing-along music video, the Gimbar video helps 

6.  Quick:  Few of her videos is longer than three minutes and most are under two minutes.

7.  "It's very personal" (Katie's assessment of her 93 videos made for an algebra 1 course).  "It's a front row seat for every one of my students" as Katie says in a TEDx talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5bYuYvl42I, minute 10:10).  

8. Modeling:   "If we want students to do something well, we should first model it for them."   The video process shows students how to deliver a concise message with inexpensive hand-drawn graphics.   No computer time is needed, no editing required.

It's up to us 

Actually, I've done my part by bringing you this information about an excellent model for the Flipped Classroom, so it's really up to you.

We teachers are here to be agents of change.  Hundreds of advocates of the flipped classroom have demonstrated how to make effective videos.   I hope that this article inspires you to search "Katie Gimbar flipped" and see what comes up.  You might be inspired, as I have been, to make short, effective, engaging videos.   Lodge McCammon and Katie Gimbar are my mentors and I recommend them to you.

Steve McCrea

(draft of an article)

What can you do?

a)  Go to Katie's Facebook page and click on "like."  There were 319 likes on 16 August.  Let's make that 100,000 by 2015.

b)  Go to youtube and search "Katie Gimbar why I flipped" and click on "like."   There were 64,000 views and 23 likes on 16 August.   Let's make that 1 million by 2015.

c)  Create four posters about a topic.   Use several colors.  Get a camera and tripod and make a video.  Post it on youtube and tell your students to look at it before class.   

d)  search  "FIZZ  McCammon" and click on the youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PcSafUTNd8 and http://www.facebook.com/fizz.education the Facebook page.

e)  Give some hits to McCammon's youtube channel.   youtube.com/pocketlodge  

f)  Visit "Molinari Digital Divide" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaxCRnZ_CLg