Flip Your Classroom PDF

Foreword One cool, crisp, typically gorgeous Colorado morning in the fall of 2010, I found myself driving into Woodland Park at the base of Pikes Peak. I was on my way to observe two teachers at Woodland Park High School whom I already “knew” online but hadn’t ever had a chance to meet in person. I...

Foreword One cool, crisp, typically gorgeous Colorado morning in the fall of 2010, I found myself driving into Woodland Park at the base of Pikes Peak. I was on my way to observe two teachers at Woodland Park High School whom I already “knew” online but hadn’t ever had a chance to meet in person. I first “met” Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams online sometime in 2007. I don’t recall exactly when and in what context anymore, but I began to read about the “flipped” approach they were using in their chemistry classes. As a former math teacher and current director of technology for my high school, this fit in nicely with my ongoing efforts to try to figure out how to best use tech- nology to meet the needs of our teachers and students. I began to read (and watch) more about this model and conversed with Jon and Aaron in various online settings trying to learn more about the advantages—and disadvantages—of this approach. Right from the start, it was clear that they didn’t think they had all the answers. They were very upfront about what was working, and what wasn’t working; about which aspects of their approach they thought were rock solid, and which aspects were weak (and they were constantly asking questions to try to improve these). In an age of “silver bullets” in education, this was refreshing. Eventually Brian Hatak, one of the chemistry teachers at my high school, decided to try to implement a flipped classroom approach, and we began to try to figure out together—with lots of help from Jon and Aaron from afar—how best to do this. (Oh, how I wish we’d had this book then.) Much like Jon and Aaron’s experience, we learned tremendously from both our successes and our challenges. When in the fall of 2010 I returned to the classroom to pick up one section of algebra in addition to my tech director duties (a result of budget cuts), I knew I wanted to try to learn from their Flip Your Classroom vii  Foreword experiences to try to implement my own version of a flipped classroom approach. I asked if I could come down and visit their classrooms. Although no book is as good as visiting their classrooms, not everyone lives close enough to just drive down and visit. This book is the next best thing. It provides a window into a flipped classroom led by two educators who were driven by a simple question: “What is best for the students in my classroom?” Although they felt pretty good about their “traditional” teaching, they knew they could do better. The flipped classroom approach, like all good educational ideas, stemmed from the needs of their students. This book chronicles their journey from their first shaky steps at trying to “flip” their classrooms to their current “best practice so far” flipped-mastery classroom model. This book shows you the evolution of their thinking. They share not only what went well, but what they also ultimately decided was not good practice. They want you to learn from their mistakes so that you can make new mistakes and then share what you’ve learned to improve the model for all. It’s both a philosophical look at why they believe the flipped approach is good for learners, and a very practical book describing step-by- step how to get started and what questions you need to consider. Jon and Aaron describe how their flipped-mastery approach helps their students learn the content better, as well as helps them become better learners. Not only do they score well on tests, but they truly understand chemistry at a much deeper level. Jon and Aaron also describe how it has allowed them to interact more often with their students, how they develop better and more personal relationships with their students, and how students can better personalize their own learning. For anyone interested in learning more about flipping their classroom, Jon and Aaron have provided a book that helps answer both the “why” and the “how-to.” They will help you decide viii Flip Your Classroom  Foreword whether you want to flip your classroom (not everyone will). And, if you do decide to flip, they will save you (and your students) countless hours. Not that it will be easy—teaching never is. However, this book quickly gets you up to speed on the potential and the pitfalls of the flipped approach. Is the flipped approach best for your students? Only you can decide that. But this book is an invaluable aid in helping you do that. Read it. Question it. Try it. Improve on it. Share what you’ve learned. That’s what Jon and Aaron have done with this book. Karl Fisch September 2011 Highlands Ranch, Colorado, USA Flip Your Classroom ix  Chapter 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom Enrique is struggling in school, specifically in his math course. Every day his teacher stands in front of the class and teaches to the state standards. She uses the latest technology. She received a grant for an interactive whiteboard that is supposed to engage all kids and get them excited about learning. Enrique’s problem is that the teacher talks too fast for him, and he can’t take notes quickly enough. When he does get all the notes from class onto paper, he does not understand what they mean. When he goes home to complete his homework, he continues to struggle because what he wrote down in class during the lecture doesn’t seem to match with what he is supposed to do on his assignment. Thus, Enrique, a hard-working student, has few Flip Your Classroom 1  CHAP TER 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom options: he can go into class early and ask his teacher for help, he can call a friend with the hope that the friend understood what she said, he can copy the homework from a friend, or he might simply give up. Janice is active in volleyball, basketball, and track at Eastside High School. She is a conscientious student who always wants to do her best. Unfortunately, she has a difficult science class the last period of every day. She must often leave school early to travel to games and matches, and she misses a lot of classes. She tries to keep up with her science class, but she just can’t because she misses so much of it. She sometimes comes in and meets with her teacher before school, but he is often too busy to individually teach her everything she missed. Ashley has spent the better part of her life learning how to “play school.” She is 10 years into mastering the art of meeting her teachers’ requirements by making sure that she meets every detail of a grading rubric. She never actually absorbs the key concepts. She consistently earns As and Bs in her classes—not because she has demonstrated understanding, but because she has met the requirements in the rubric. Those grades do not accurately reflect what she has actually learned. Ashley is being served very poorly by her school. Sadly, these scenarios are common across the country. Many struggling students who genuinely want to learn fall behind instead. Others are so busy that they miss out on key concepts. Still others learn how to “play school,” but never really learn important objectives in their courses. The flipped classroom can address the needs of students such as Enrique, Janice, and Ashley by allowing their teachers to person- alize the students’ education. You can do the same—whether you teach math, science, social studies, language arts, physical educa- tion, ELL, a foreign language, or humanities. This book will show you how! 2 Flip Your Classroom  Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 1 Background In 2006, we both started teaching at Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park, Colorado. Jonathan came from Denver and Aaron from southern California. We became the chemistry department at our school of 950 students. As our friendship developed, we realized that we had very similar philosophies of education. To make our lives easier, we began planning our chemistry lessons together, and to save time we divided up much of the work. Aaron would set up one lab and Jonathan the next. Aaron would write the first test, and Jonathan the next. A problem we noticed right away about teaching in a relatively rural school is that many students miss a great deal of school because of sports and activities. The “nearby” schools are not truly nearby. Students spend an inordinate amount of time on buses traveling to and from events. Thus, students missed our classes and struggled to stay caught up. And then one day our world changed. Aaron was thumbing through a technology magazine and showed Jonathan an article about some software that would record a PowerPoint slide show, including voice and any annotations, and then convert the recording into a video file that could be easily distributed online. YouTube was just getting started, and the world of online video was in its infancy. But as we discussed the potential of such soft- ware, we realized that this might be a way to keep our students who missed class from missing out on learning. So, in the spring of 2007, we began to record our live lessons using screen capture software. We posted our lectures online so our students could access them. In all honesty, we recorded our lessons out of selfishness. We were spending inordinate amounts of time reteaching lessons to students who missed class, and the recorded lectures became our first line of defense. The conversation usually went something like this: Flip Your Classroom 3  CHAP TER 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom Student: Mr. Sams, I was gone last class. What did I miss? Mr. Sams: I tell you what, go to my website, watch the video I posted, and come see me with any questions you have. Student: OK. Our absent students loved the recorded lectures. Students who missed class were able to learn what they had missed. Some students who were in class and heard the live lecture began to rewatch the videos. Some would watch them when reviewing for exams. And we loved it because we didn’t have to spend hours after school, at lunch, or during our planning time getting kids caught up. We never could have expected the side effects of posting our lessons online: the emails began. Because our videos were posted online, students and teachers from all over the world began thanking us for them. Students just like ours who had struggled with chemistry found our videos and started using them to learn. We participate in several online science teacher forums, and we began to share the links to the recorded lectures there. Teachers from all over the country began to take notice. Chemistry teachers began to use our video lectures as plans for substitute teachers, and some new teachers used them to learn chemistry content so they could teach it to their students. All in all, it was amazing to see that what we were doing in our small town was being noticed across the country. The Flipped Classroom Is Born In our combined total of 37 years of teaching, we have been frustrated with students not being able to translate content from our lectures into useful information that would allow them to complete their homework. Then, one day, Aaron had an insight that would change our world. It was one simple observation: “The time when students really need me physically present is when they get stuck and need my individual help. They don’t need 4 Flip Your Classroom  Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 1 me there in the room with them to yak at them and give them content; they can receive content on their own.” He then asked this question: “What if we prerecorded all of our lectures, students viewed the video as ‘homework,’ and then we used the entire class period to help students with the concepts they don’t understand?” Thus, our flipped classroom was born. We made a commitment during the 2007–08 school year to prerecord all of our chem- istry and Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry lectures. To make things easier on us, one of us would do Unit 1 of chemistry and the other Unit 1 of AP chemistry. Then we switched off for each subsequent unit. This meant many early mornings for Jonathan, the morning person, and many late nights for Aaron, the night person in our duo. Our students are on a block schedule where we see them for 95 minutes every other day. Every other night our students watch one of our videos as homework and take notes on what they learned. Teaching science courses, we continued to conduct the same laboratory experiments that we had always done. We found that we had more time for both the labs and the problem work time. In fact, for the first time in either of our careers, we ran out of things for the students to do. They were completing all their work with 20 minutes left in class. Clearly, this model was more efficient than lecturing and assigning homework. We also decided to give the same end-of-unit tests as we had done the previous year. We discuss the details in the next chapter— but, in short, our students learned more and we had some rough data that seemed to indicate the flipped classroom was a better model than the traditional approach. We implemented the flipped model for one year and we were very pleased with how our students were learning. We had evidence our model worked and was better for kids. So you would think we would perfect this model and continue to teach that way—but you’d be partially wrong. More on that in a bit. Flip Your Classroom 5  CHAP TER 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom Before we proceed with our story, we would be remiss if we did not mention a few important facts: (1) We did not lecture exclu- sively in our classes before flipping; we have always included inquiry-based learning and projects. (2) We were not the first educators to use screencast videos in the classroom as an instruc- tional tool, but we were early adopters and outspoken proponents of the tool, and for us, the flipped class would not have been possible without them. However, there are teachers who use many of the concepts you will read in this book and who call their classrooms flipped, but do not use videos as instructional tools. (3) We did not come up with the term flipped classroom. No one owns that term. Although it has been popularized by various media outlets and seems to have stuck, there is no such thing as the flipped classroom. How Flipping Aids Personalization Flipping the classroom establishes a framework that ensures students receive a personalized education tailored to their indi- vidual needs. Remember Enrique, Janice, and Ashley from our opening story? They represent the struggling students, the over- scheduled students, and the students who get by with superficial learning. Educators are expected to find a way to reach these students with their very different needs. Personalization of educa- tion has been proposed as a solution. The movement toward personalization has much merit, but for a single teacher to personalize education for 150 students is difficult and does not work in the traditional educational setting. The present model of education reflects the age in which it was designed: the industrial revolution. Students are educated in an assembly line to make their standardized education efficient. They are asked to sit in nice neat rows, listen to an “expert” expound on a subject, and recall the learned information on an exam. Yet somehow, in this climate, all students are expected to receive the same education. The weakness of the traditional approach is that not all students come to class prepared to learn. 6 Flip Your Classroom  Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 1 Some lack adequate background for the material, are uninterested in the subject, or have simply been disenchanted with the present educational model. For the better part of a decade, educators have been told to provide a personalized education for each student, and most educators believe that personalization is a positive goal to reach for each student. However, the logistics of personalizing 150 different educations each day seems insurmountable to most teachers. Exactly how can a teacher personalize the education of so many kids? How can she ensure that every student learns when there are so many standards to cover? Personalization is truly overwhelming for most educators, and they end up taking the shotgun approach to teaching: present as much content as they can in the time they have, and hope that it hits as many students as possible—and sticks. When we began flipping our classrooms, we quickly realized that we had stumbled on a framework that enables teachers to effectively personalize the education of each student—the goal of educators since the concept of individualized learning first appeared. As we present our flipped classroom model to educators around the world, many have said, “This is reproducible, scalable, customizable, and easy for teachers to wrap their minds around.” You may also have noticed some similarities between a flipped classroom and other educational models such as blended learning, reverse instruction, inverted classroom, and 24/7 classroom. All of these models have similar features and could possibly be interchangeable in certain contexts. The Flipped Classroom Grows As we began this journey, we had no idea that what we were doing was going to spread beyond our four walls. Then, out of the blue, we got an email from a neighboring school district wanting us to come and tell them about the flipped model. Flip Your Classroom 7  CHAP TER 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom They even offered to pay us! So we packed our bags and spent a day in Cañon City, Colorado. Most teachers have sat in staff development training where the principal or superintendent has brought in some “expert”—someone from out of town with a slide show. Well, we were those experts. When we started most of the teachers were sitting there with glazed expressions, as if they were daring these two yahoos to capture their attention. As we shared our story, their slumped bodies began to become straighter. Soon the teachers in the audience were asking ques- tions and showing genuine interest in the flipped model. And then as we broke them into groups to begin practicing how to make their own videos, we realized we had stumbled on some- thing that was much bigger than ourselves. One seasoned teacher told us that in 26 years of teaching, our presentation and work- shop was the most valuable professional development day he had ever attended. I do not know if his comment had as much to do with our presentation skills as it did with the simplicity and reproducibility of the model we presented. A few weeks later, our assistant principal came into our rooms and asked us, were we expecting anybody from Channel 11? Much to our surprise, the education reporter from one of the news stations had heard about us and had just shown up on our doorstep. The reporter made a short news clip about what we were doing... and, as they say, the rest is history. We were invited to speak at conferences, asked to train educators at schools, districts, and even colleges, and spoke about the flipped class- room across the United States, Canada, and Europe. The Flipped Mastery Class Begins Then, one day, our world was rocked by conversations with some of our students. At the end of every year we give students a comprehensive project. In this project, they are asked to analyze a household substance and chemically determine some 8 Flip Your Classroom  Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 1 quantitative property of that substance. The year we implemented the flipped model, students were supposed to analyze a soft drink and determine the percentage of phosphoric acid in the beverage. We have done this project for years, and we were expecting that this group of students, the first who had learned in the flipped model, would set a new standard for good results. When students finish this project, each group has an oral interview with the teacher. In that interview, we ask some key conceptual ques- tions that get to the heart of what students should have learned in chemistry. We were surprised and disappointed to find that, although this group of students had performed better on tests than students in the past, some of their responses in the inter- view made it seem that they had learned just for the test, instead of really mastering the essential concepts all chemistry students should learn. On further reflection, we determined that despite our best efforts to meet the needs of all students, we were still pushing our kids through our curriculum whether they were ready to move on or not. We began to wonder if we could set up a flipped class- room that also had elements of a mastery-learning environment (students learning a series of objectives at their own pace). Our conversation went something like this: In the traditional flipped model (It feels strange to say that there is a “traditional” flipped model!), all students watch the same video on the same night. Then, in class, all students complete the same activity or lab. But now that we have a library of instructional videos, why does every student need to be on the same topic at the same time? Another thing that got us thinking about the flipped-mastery model was the entrance of a foreign exchange student into Jonathan’s class. The counselors came to Jonathan and asked him if a student could join his chemistry class at the beginning of the second semester. When Jonathan asked about her previous chem- istry class, he was told that she had no background. Before we made our videos, there would have been no way to allow such a student into class in the middle of the year. As Jonathan thought Flip Your Classroom 9  CHAP TER 1 Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom it through, he realized that he had a whole library of videos made for chemistry. She could work through them at her own pace. He took the student into his class. She started at Unit 1 and worked her way through the chemistry curriculum. In our course we have 10 units that cover the entire year. She got through 8 of the 10 in one semester. As we observed her work, we began to think about a system where all students worked through the material as they mastered the content at their own pace. Our ultimate goal is for all students to really learn chemistry. We wondered if we could set up a system in which students prog- ress through the course as they master the material. You must understand that we had never been trained in how to implement a mastery system of learning. Subsequently, we discovered that mastery learning has been around for a long time. A great deal of research has been done on how to implement such a system. We didn’t consult the literature, we didn’t do any research: we simply jumped in. Our first year of teaching with the flipped-mastery model was a year with a steep learning curve. We made a lot of mistakes. When that year was over, we looked at each other and asked, “Should we continue with this?” Both of us realized that we could not go back. We had seen our students learning chemistry more deeply than ever before, and we were convinced. Our method was changing students’ abilities to become self-directed learners. Are You Ready to Flip? By now you may have realized that we have a pretty high toler- ance for change. We are willing to try almost anything if we think it will help our students. And fortunately, we have made many good decisions along the journey. We have also made many mistakes. It is our hope that if you decide to implement the flipped or even the flipped-mastery model, you will learn from our mistakes and improve on our model. 10 Flip Your Classroom  Our Story: Creating the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 1 We also hope that as you read, you realize that there is no single way to flip your classroom—there is no such thing as the flipped classroom. There is no specific methodology to be replicated, no checklist to follow that leads to guaranteed results. Flipping the classroom is more about a mindset: redirecting attention away from the teacher and putting attention on the learner and the learning. Every teacher who has chosen to flip does so differently. In fact, even though we developed our flipped class together and are next door to each other, Jonathan’s classroom still looks different from Aaron’s classroom, and our personalities and indi- vidual teaching styles shine through the commonalities. We purposely kept this book short, hoping you will read it in one sitting, or at most over a weekend. It is organized quite simply: first the flipped classroom, then the flipped-mastery model, and finally a section with FAQs and concluding thoughts. We answer the questions of what, why, and how to implement each model. Also interspersed throughout the book are anecdotes and quotes from other educators across the globe who have in some fashion flipped their classrooms. Flip Your Classroom 11  Chapter 2 the Flipped Classroom At this point you should have an idea of what a flipped class entails, but you may be asking exactly what in the classroom is “flipped.” Basically the concept of a flipped class is this: that which is traditionally done in class is now done at home, and that which is traditionally done as homework is now completed in class. But as you will see, there is more to a flipped classroom than this. We are often asked about what the flipped class- room looks like on a day-to-day basis. Essentially, we start each class with a few minutes of discussion about the video from the night before. One of the drawbacks to the flipped model is that students cannot ask immediate questions that come to their mind, as they could if the topic were being taught live. To address this issue, we spend a considerable Flip Your Classroom 13  CHAP TER 2 The Flipped Classroom amount of time at the beginning of the year training the students to view our videos effectively. We encourage them to turn off iPods, phones, and other distractions while they watch the video. We then teach them that they now have the ability to “pause” and “rewind” their teacher. We encourage them to liberally use the pause button so they can write down key points of the lesson. In addition, we instruct them in the Cornell note-taking method, in which they take notes, record any questions they have, and summarize their learning. Students who adopt this model of note taking typically come to class with appropriate questions that help us address their misconceptions. We also use these questions to evaluate the effectiveness of our videos. If every student has a similar question, we clearly did not teach that topic well, and we make a note to remake or correct that particular video. After the initial questions are answered, students are given the assignment for the day. It might be a lab, an inquiry activity, a directed problem-solving activity, or a test. Because we are on a 95-minute block schedule, students usually do more than one of these activities in any given class period. We continue to grade assignments, labs, and tests just as we always have under the traditional model. But the role of the teacher in the classroom has dramatically changed. We are no longer the presenters of information; instead, we take on more of a tutorial role. The change experienced by the teacher was probably identified best by Shari Kendrick, a teacher in San Antonio who adopted our model: “I don’t have to go to school and perform five times a day. Instead I spend my days interacting with and helping my students.” One huge benefit of flipping is that the students who struggle get the most help. We spend our time walking around the room helping students with concepts they are stuck on. In the traditional model, students would usually come into class confused about some of the homework problems from the previous night. Generally we would spend the first 25 minutes doing a warm-up activity and going over those problems they 14 Flip Your Classroom  The Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 2 didn’t understand. We would then present new content for 30 to 45 minutes and spend the remainder of the class with indepen- dent practice or a lab. In the flipped model, the time is completely restructured. Students still need to ask questions about the content that has been delivered via video, so we generally answer these questions during the first few minutes of class. This allows us to clear up misconceptions before they are practiced and applied incorrectly. The remainder of the time is used for more extensive hands-on activities and/or directed problem-solving time (see Table 2.1). Table 2.1 Comparison of Class Time in Traditional versus Flipped Classrooms Traditional Classroom Flipped Classroom Activity Time Activity Time Warm-up activity 5 min. Warm-up activity 5 min. Go over previous night’s 20 min. Q&A time on video 10 min. homework Guided and independent 30–45 Lecture new content practice and/or 75 min. min. lab activity Guided and independent 20–35 practice and/or min. lab activity Let’s look at a typical unit in Aaron’s AP chemistry class and see an example of how the role of the teacher has changed. Aaron’s AP chemistry class begins the night before in the home of each student. Students are not assigned problems or reading from the book, but rather, a video. All students will watch a video (on their iPod, computer, or TV) of Aaron and Jonathan explaining the material that will be applied in class in the morning. Flip Your Classroom 15  CHAP TER 2 The Flipped Classroom Class begins. Aaron quickly takes attendance and starts a question-and-answer session. Students ask questions about the previous night’s video, and Aaron helps clarify misconceptions. After 10 minutes or so, Aaron instructs the students to take out their packet of practice problems, many of which are similar in structure to the type of questions they will see on the AP Chemistry exam. He leads the class through a few examples that reflect the content students learned the night before and takes any further questions. Then it is time to work. The students complete the remaining assigned problems while Aaron moves around the class helping students as they have questions. A solu- tion guide is available to students who want to check their work. On days when a lab will be conducted, no video is assigned. Instead, students complete a prelab activity at home. In class, Aaron fields any pertinent questions about the lab and discusses safety. Then the students begin experimenting. Under a tradi- tional model, the completion of any calculations and discussions is usually assigned as homework after a lab. Under the flipped classroom model, however, the next video is assigned for home- work, and students are given time in class the next day to complete the lab. This allows Aaron to answer specific questions about the lab and assist struggling students with their calcula- tions, as well as discuss the data collected as a class. When exam day rolls around, all students take the exam at the same time and are provided timely feedback so misconceptions can be addressed. Ultimately, all students need to be through the curriculum by the end of April so preparation can be made for the AP exam in May. So that all students are prepared for the exam by the established date, they all work at the same pace. Clearly, the class is centered around the students and not the teacher. Students are responsible for viewing the videos and asking appropriate questions. The teacher is simply there to provide expert feedback. The students are responsible for completing and sharing their work. Because a solution guide is available, students are motivated to learn, not just to complete 16 Flip Your Classroom  The Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 2 the assignments in a rote manner. Students are responsible for making appropriate use of the resident expert to help them understand the concepts. The role of the teacher in the classroom is to help students, not to deliver information. Teaching under a traditional model is draining. I feel like I have to “perform,” which requires energy, enthusiasm, and a “you are on-stage” effort at all times. I remember last year driving into work, thinking, “Man, I feel like just being a student today. I wish I could go in and let someone else do all the work—be in the passenger seat for once.” When I switched over I felt free. I was able to go in and watch my students work. I don’t mean that I sat back and drank coffee—I stayed busy interacting one-on-one; working with kids who were struggling; addressing questions that students had that I never had time for before; really getting to know my kids. It is just that the burden of learning had traded hands. And you know, really, it had to be passed on. I can’t force someone to learn—they have to accept that responsibility for themselves. This method allows them to clearly see that—and gives them a struc- tured environment that ensures success. — Jennifer Douglass (Westside High School, Macon, Georgia) Flip Your Classroom 17  Chapter 3 Why You Should Flip YOUR Classroom Flipping the classroom has transformed our teaching practice. We no longer stand in front of our students and talk at them for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. This radical change has allowed us to take on a different role with our students. Both of us taught for many years using a lecture format. We were both good teachers. In fact, Jonathan received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching as a lecturer, and Aaron received the same award under the flipped model. As we look back, however, we realize we could never go back to teaching in the traditional manner. The flipped classroom has changed not just our own classrooms. Teachers from around the world have adopted the model and are using it to teach classes in all curriculum areas to elementary, Flip Your Classroom 19  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom middle, and high school students as well as adults. We have seen how flipping your classroom can change kids’ lives. In this chapter, we want to highlight why you should consider flipping your classroom. I can’t think of a reason to willingly go back to the traditional lecture method. I have to teach so many different courses this year that I have not been able to use the video/mastery method in my forensics course. I hate teaching it, because I now hate lecturing. — Brett Wilie (First Baptist Academy, Dallas, Texas) Flipping speaks the language of today’s students Today’s students grew up with Internet access, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and a host of other digital resources. They can typically be found doing their math homework while texting their friends, IMing on Facebook, and listening to music all at the same time. Many of these students report that when they come to school, they have to turn off and dumb down because their schools ban cell phones, iPods, and any other digital devices. The sad thing is that most students are carrying in their pockets a more powerful computing device than the vast majority of computers in our underfunded schools—and we don’t allow them to use it. When we present the flipped classroom to educators, we usually get an ooh-ahh reaction from our audiences, which are primarily made up of adults who did not grow up with the always-on digital world. When we began flipping, we were surprised at our students’ lack of amazement. After about two weeks of watching the videos, they had settled into learning, and the “wow” factor was gone. These students understand digital learning. To them, all we are doing is speaking their language. Don’t 20 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 get us wrong—we are not saying they don’t appre- Bad Reasons for ciate learning this way. But Flipping Your Classroom instruction via video is not a big deal for today’s students. Because some guys who got a book published told you to. One concern we have heard We’re flattered that you are interested in what we have from adults is that we’re to say, but do not adopt any increasing screen time in teaching strategy without front of a computer, which thinking it through first. aggravates the discon- Because you think it will create nect many adults feel with a 21st-century classroom. today’s youth. To that we Pedagogy should always say that we are infiltrating drive technology, never the the video/digital culture other way around. instead of fighting it. Isn’t Because you think you will it about time we embraced become cutting edge. digital learning and used it Flipping does not necessarily to help our students learn, use the latest technology. instead of telling them they Because you think flipping your can’t learn with today’s classroom exempts you from tools? It seems preposterous being a good teacher. Teaching is much more than to us that schools have not good content delivery. embraced this change. Because you think it will make When you walk into our your job easier. classrooms, you will see Flipping will not make your students engaged in a job any easier. variety of activities using different digital devices. Students are working on our (obsolete) class computers, they are using their iPods, they are working together, they are experimenting, and they are inter- acting with their teacher. We encourage our students to bring in their own electronic equipment because, frankly, it is better than our school’s antiquated technology. Flip Your Classroom 21  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom Flipping helps busy students Students today are busy, busy, busy. Many are overprogrammed, going from one event to the next. Our students appreciate the flexibility of the flipped classroom. Because the main content is delivered via online videos, students can choose to work ahead. Jonathan had a student who was a competitive gymnast who regularly traveled to out-of-state competitions. When she was gone, she missed most of the instruction in her classes. But because she was in a flipped classroom for science, she did not miss any of the content in that class. She chose to work ahead when competitions were coming up. When she returned, she had at least one class she didn’t have to worry about. Aaron had a student who is heavily involved in student council. This year, when homecoming was approaching, she worked ahead. She got one week ahead in his class, and when home- coming week happened, she used Aaron’s class time to work on homecoming activities. These two students have not just learned how to “work the system”—they are learning valuable life lessons in managing their time. This would not work in a traditional classroom, but flipping the classroom provides a great deal of flexibility to help students with their busy lives. We have students that travel very far to get to school (some up to an hour and a half on the subway each way) and this allows them to work on chemistry whenever they want. Many of my students also participate in multiple sports, so athletes are not missing class anymore, which helps everyone in the long run. — Brian Bennett (an international school in Seoul, South Korea) 22 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 Flipping helps struggling students When we taught in the traditional manner, the students who tended to get most of our attention were the best and brightest—students who would raise their hands first and ask great questions. In the meantime, the rest of the students would passively listen to the conversation we had with the inquisitive students. But since our introduction of the flipped model, our role has changed; we spend most of our class walking around helping the students who struggle most. We think this may be the single most important reason students thrive in the flipped model. This is not to say that we ignore our top students. But the majority of our attention no longer goes to them. Now it is directed to the students who need the most help. Flipping helps students of all abilities to excel Our special education teachers love this model as well. Because all the direct instruction is recorded, students with special needs can watch the videos as many times as they need to learn the material. No more frantically trying to copy down notes with the hope that they’ll understand them later. Instead, students can pause their teacher, rewind their teacher, and make sure they actually learn the important concepts. Some of the students that have struggled in the past (according to their parents) are doing much better because of my ability to work with them more one-on-one in class, helping with objectives they are having trouble with. — Brett Wilie (First Baptist Academy, Dallas, Texas) Flip Your Classroom 23  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom Flipping allows students to pause and rewind their teacher As educators, we usually have a specific curriculum we need to cover in our courses. Students are expected to learn a given body of knowledge, and most of the time we hope that they under- stand our presentations. However, even the best presenters and lecturers have students who fall behind and don’t understand or learn all that is required. When we flipped the classroom, we gave the students control of the remote. Giving students the ability to pause their teachers is truly revolutionary. Jonathan’s daughter was in one of his classes, and while Jonathan observed her watching one of the videos at home, she suddenly burst out and said, “I love these videos.” He asked her why. She said, “I can pause you!” Pausing is a powerful feature for a number of reasons. Making students all sit in tidy rows and listen to their teacher eloquently explain his or her area of expertise is not always an effective means of communicating to them. We often move too fast for some students and too slowly for others. Our quick learners understand immediately and get bored waiting, while our struggling students take more time to process. Inevitably, when we click the arrow to move to the next slide, a small group of students scream and shout asking to go back to the previous slide. When we give students the ability to pause their teachers, they have the chance to process at the speed that is appropriate for them. We especially encourage students who process more slowly to use the rewind button so they can hear us explain something more than one time. If they still don’t understand, we will work with them individually or in small groups in the classroom. On the other end, we have students who are often bored because the teacher is going too slowly for them. These students appre- ciate the pause function for different reasons. These typically are our busiest students, involved in myriad activities and sports. 24 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 Giving them the ability to pause helps these students with time management. Jonathan’s daughter was one of these students, and she liked the pause button so she could break up the lesson into shorter segments and learn on her own schedule. We even have had a few students who watch our videos at double speed. These students are able to process our instruction faster than most, and though our voices sound as if we have been inhaling helium, they find this to be a better use of their time. Flipping increases student–teacher interaction A statement we frequently hear goes something like this: “This is a great method for online teaching, but I don’t want to replace my classroom with online courses.” Though flipping certainly has great potential to change online education, the purpose of this book is not to promote the benefits of such education. We are both classroom teachers who see our students every day. Most students today still come to a brick-and-mortar school where they see both their teachers and their peers. We believe that flipping allows teachers to leverage technology to increase interaction with students. We must be clear, however. We are not advocating the replacement of classrooms and classroom teachers with online instruction. In fact, we strongly believe that flipping the classroom creates an ideal merger of online and face-to-face instruction that is becoming known as a “blended” classroom. We often conduct minilectures with groups of students who are struggling with the same content. The beauty of these minilectures is we are delivering just-in-time instruction when the students are ready for learning. Teachers play a vital role in the lives of their students. They are mentors, friends, neighbors, and experts. Having face-to-face interaction with teachers is an invaluable experience for students. Flip Your Classroom 25  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom I wanted to thank you and Aaron for turning me on to the flipped classroom. I was observed by one of the assistant principals and he loved the idea so much he went to the principal later that day and told him everything I was doing. He said that every administrator should see this model and I seem to be the only one implementing all aspects of the philosophy of the school. He wants me to con­duct a professional development workshop on it for next year so more teachers can start doing this. So, being a nontenured teacher in a district in a budget crisis, I think you helped me secure a job for life. Thank you so much for the work you two have done and how you have inspired me to take my teaching to the next level. One day I will have to make it out to Colorado to thank you in person. — Marc Seigel (Basking Ridge, New Jersey) Flipping allows teachers to know their students better We as teachers are at school not only to teach content, but also to inspire, to encourage, to listen, and to provide a vision for our students. This happens in the context of relationships. We have always believed that a good teacher builds relationships with students. Students need positive adult role models in their lives. We hope we can be such role models. We developed these rela- tionships before we flipped the classroom, but flipping allows us to build better relationships with our students. This is due to the increased teacher–student interaction. The year we started flipping, we encouraged students to interact with us via text messaging. Most of the time the content of these text messages is along the lines of “How do I get help on problem X?” or “What is the benchmark for this coming week?” Because we make the instructional videos together, most of our students do not think of Jonathan or Aaron as their teacher—they think of both of us as their teachers. Naturally, some students connect better with Aaron and some better with Jonathan. One day 26 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 one of Aaron’s students started texting Jonathan, and at first, the texts were all about science. Soon the tone of the texts changed. Jonathan realized this student was calling out for help and referred him to our counseling staff. As it turned out, this student had been kicked out of his house and was going through some intense personal issues. Though flipping didn’t create this relationship, it helped create a positive environment where the struggling student could interact with an adult, and this student got the help he needed. Flipping increases student–student interaction One of the greatest benefits of flipping is that overall interaction increases: teacher-to-student, and student-to-student. Because the role of the teacher has changed from presenter of content to learning coach, we spend our time talking to kids. We are answering questions, working with small groups, and guiding the learning of each student individually. When students are working on an assignment and we notice that several of them are struggling with the same thing, we spontane- ously organize these students into a tutorial group. Because the role of the teacher has changed to more of a tutor than a deliverer of content, we have the privilege of observing as students interact with each other. As we roam around the class, we notice the students developing their own collaborative groups. Students are helping each other learn instead of relying on the teacher as the sole disseminator of knowledge. It is truly magical to observe. We are often in awe of how well our students work together and learn from each other. Some might ask how we developed a culture of learning. We think the key is for students to identify learning as their goal, instead of striving for the completion of assignments. We have purposely tried to make our classes places where students carry Flip Your Classroom 27  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom out meaningful activities instead of completing busywork. When we respect our students in this way, they usually respond. They begin to realize—and for some it takes time—that we are here to guide them in their learning instead of being authoritative pedagogues. Our goal is for them to be the best learners possible, and to truly understand the content in our classes. When our students grasp the concept that we are on their side, they respond by doing their best. Flipping allows for real differentiation One of the struggles in today’s schools is accommodating a vast range of abilities in each class. We have everyone from students who excel, to average students, to students who struggle with our content, to students who cannot read. Flipping the class showed us just how needy many of our students were and how powerful the flipped classroom is in reaching students all along this broad range of abilities. Because the majority of our time is used to walk around the room and help students, we can personalize the learning of all. For our students who quickly understand the content, we have found that if they can prove to us their understanding of a particular objective, we will cut down on the number of problems they need to do. Think of these as individual contracts with each student, where the student has to prove understanding. These students appreciate this because they realize we are not interested in busy- work, but rather learning. For our students who struggle, we look for key understanding. We realize that our course is hard for many students and that learning doesn’t come easily for all. For these students, we often modify their work on the fly by asking them to complete only key problems instead of all of them. This way our students who struggle will learn the essential objectives and not get bogged down with some of the more advanced topics that may just confuse them. 28 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 During my time in undergrad and graduate school, I heard about how students do not all learn the same way, or at the same pace. These classes introduced the concept of a differentiated classroom, but I never knew how I could actually do that when there was only one of me, and 25–30 students in the class needing me to teach 12 different lessons to them. When I heard about creating instruc- tional video clips, I finally realized that this is what I need in order to be able to create 25 copies of myself … which would allow kids the freedom to speed up, or slow down, as needed. I also was incredibly frustrated with students taking quizzes and tests unpre- pared, doing poorly, and then we would move on—regardless of performance. Now I can use classroom time to address student questions and review problems that they are frequently missing. — Melissa De Jong (Roosevelt High School, Sioux Falls, South Dakota) Flipping changes classroom management Under a traditional model of teaching, we had students who consistently did not pay attention in class. These students were often a distraction to the rest of the class and negatively affected everybody else’s learning. They were often either bored or just simply unruly. When we flipped the classroom, we discovered something amazing. Because we were not just standing and talking at kids, many of the classroom management problems evaporated. Students who needed an audience no longer had one. Because class time is primarily used for students to either do hands-on activities or work in small groups, those students who were typically a distraction become a nonissue. They either did not have an audience or they were no longer bored and were willing to dive into the learning. Don’t get us wrong. We still have to redirect students. We still have students who underperform. But so many of the bigger classroom management issues have simply disappeared. Flip Your Classroom 29  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom Flipping changes the way we talk to parents We both remember years of sitting in parent conferences, where parents would often ask us how their son or daughter behaved in class. What they were really asking was, “Does my child sit quietly, act respectfully, raise his or her hand, and not disturb other students?” These skills are certainly good for all to learn— but when we first started flipping the classroom, we struggled to answer this question. You see, the question is a nonissue in our classroom. Because students are coming with the primary focus on learning, there are two real questions now: Is each student learning? If not, what can we do to help them learn? These are much more profound questions, and when we discuss them with parents, we move the focus to a place that will help parents understand how their students can become better learners. There are myriad reasons why a student may not be learning well. The student may have some missing background knowledge. The student may have personal issues that interfere with learning. Or the student may be more concerned with “playing school” than actually learning. When we (the parents and teachers) can diag- nose why the child is not learning, we create a powerful moment where the necessary interventions can be implemented. Flipping educates parents A surprising thing happened when we started talking to parents during parent teacher conferences. Many of them told us they loved our videos. We then asked, “You watch our videos?” As it turns out, many of them were watching right alongside their chil- dren and learning science. This leads to interesting discussions between students and parents about the content of our lessons. This has been echoed across the country as other teachers have 30 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 adopted our model. They have told us similar stories of educating their parent community. At a conference we attended a few years ago, one of the keynote speakers was a kindergarten teacher who told us this story. She taught in an ethnically diverse school that had many new English-language learners. One of the key ingredients in becoming a good reader is to be read to. She was awarded a grant for some iPod Nanos on which she recorded herself, and others, reading books to her students. The ELL students would then take the iPod Nanos home with the corresponding book and would listen to the story read to them. As the iPods were continually being used by students she started noticing they were coming back to her with the batteries almost drained. She knew how long the batteries would last and expressed her puzzlement with her students. When parent- teacher conferences occurred, one mother told her she was sorry for draining the batteries of the iPod. The mother then told this teacher that not only was she listening to the stories, but so were the grandmother, the aunt, and the whole extended family. The teacher’s audio files were educating many more people than she ever expected. I have had very positive feedback from parents. Flipping the classroom has enabled parents to help their children because the parents are watching the videos too. A few of them thought that I was no longer teaching, and it took a bit to dispel this notion, but then they began to see how much more I was working one-on-one with their children with this method. — Brett Wilie (First Baptist Academy, Dallas, Texas) Flipping makes your class transparent In this age where a segment of our communities distrust the educational establishment, flipping opens the doors to our class- rooms and allows the public in. Our videos are posted on the Flip Your Classroom 31  CHAP TER 3 Why You Should Flip Your Classroom Internet, and our students’ parents and others have free access to them. Instead of wondering what their students are being exposed to in the classroom, parents can find our lessons in just a few clicks. Like it or not, schools are competing for students. Our school loses some students to neighboring schools for a variety of reasons. Much of our loss has been because parents incorrectly perceive our school to be less academic than nearby schools. Posting our videos and opening our instructional practices to the public has brought some of these students back to our school. Flipping is a great technique for absent teachers We teach in a semirural school where it is hard to obtain quali- fied substitute teachers. We especially have a hard time getting qualified teachers to walk into a chemistry class. When we first started recording our lessons and posting the videos online, we simply recorded our lessons live in front of our students. It then dawned on us that we could prerecord a lesson for our students ahead of time when we knew we were going to be gone. Jonathan was headed to a wedding out of town and thought he would try this out. He sat down in front of his computer and recorded the lesson he would normally have given. The substitute plan was simply to turn on the LCD projector, pull up the video file, and press Play. Students took notes as if he were there in class. This way his students didn’t miss a beat. They got the same lesson on the right day. Students reported how almost eerie it was to hear Jonathan’s voice without him being present in the class. This method is being used across the country. An elementary teacher in our district, when gone, prerecords his lessons for his students. Doing so ensures that students are taught the way he wants them to be taught, and he does not have to reteach on his return. The substitutes appreciate this method of teaching 32 Flip Your Classroom  Why You Should Flip Your Classroom CHAP TER 3 because students are getting just what the teacher wants. We even know of science teachers across the country using our videos as the substitute plans when they are gone. Flipping can lead to the flipped-mastery program This chapter has been a bit awkward for us to write because we no longer just flip our classrooms. Instead we are using the flipped- mastery model, in which students move through the material at their own pace. No longer do all students watch the same video on the same night. Students watch and learn in an asynchronous system where they work toward content mastery. We should note that we did not start using the flipped-mastery program until two years after abandoning the traditional model. Our journey has been a process that has occurred over several years, and we recommend that those interested in flipping make the change gradually. Flip Your Classroom 33  Chapter 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom In this chapter we address many of the logistics of implementing a flipped classroom including making or finding high-quality videos. We also offer suggestions for flipping your classroom. Homework: The Videos Before you jump into video production, carefully consider whether or not a video is the appropriate instructional tool for the desired educational outcome. If a video is appropriate, then proceed with planning one. If a video is not appropriate, then do not make one just for the sake of making a video. Doing so would be a disservice to your students and would be a prime example of Flip Your Classroom 35  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom “technology for technology’s sake.” Only employ the technology if it is an appropriate tool for the task at hand. Use your profes- sional judgment, ask your peers and mentors, and even ask your students. Probably the single most daunting task teachers face when trying to flip the classroom is accessing or producing high-quality videos. We have found teachers who are very comfortable both with technology and with recording themselves. If this describes you, you may want to skip ahead to the Making Your Own Videos section. Others may not have the time to create their own videos, struggle with technology, or do not speak well in front of a computer screen. If this describes you, we encourage you to think about using somebody else’s videos as you implement a flipped classroom. Using Other Teachers’ Videos Using videos produced by other teachers, and not producing your own videos, may be your best option as you begin flipping your classroom. Maybe you want to start flipping, but you just don’t have time to produce your own videos. Maybe you’re also not very good with talking in front of a screen, or with using the screencasting technology. When we make our videos, we sit in our classroom and talk to the computer and each other. It is harder than teaching in front of a live audience. Students are not present, and thus we have to bring a somewhat artificial dynamic presence. We don’t want to bore our students with dry videos, so we make them interesting. Thus, if you find a gifted teacher who has already made videos in your subject, by all means, feel free to use them. Some time ago we started selling our chemistry videos online. Many chemistry teachers who wanted to flip their classrooms simply used our videos and did not produce their own. Others purchased our videos to use them for some of the flipped lessons, using their own videos for the rest. With the explosion of YouTube and other video sharing sites, the number of videos is growing. Many of these videos can be used in a flipped classroom. 36 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 The key is to find quality videos regardless of your subject matter. Where do you find good-quality videos? This is not an easy question. Depending on your subject, you may have to look far and long. However, the exponential growth of free online video resources is making the search increasingly easier. A side benefit that has appeared is that students have figured out they can search online and find recorded lessons from other sources. This is a great learning tool for them in that they are taking responsibility for their own learning and discovering ways to find the information they need. These kids are growing up in a digital world and it is important they learn how to navigate through it and find information they may need on their own. — Brett Wilie (First Baptist Academy, Dallas, Texas) Making Your Own Videos When we use the word video, most teachers think of a video camera on them while they teach their class. Although this might be effective in some cases, we believe there are better ways to make videos for use in the flipped classroom. We use a screencasting program, Camtasia Studio, that captures anything on our screen, our voices, a small webcam of our faces, and any digital pen annotations we include. The pen feature is especially useful for lessons that involve mathematical problem solving. Precreating a bunch of numbers to appear on a PowerPoint slide show is not as dynamic as writing with the pen, in real time, and describing our thought process as we explain a problem. Other features, such as picture-in-picture, video clips, and many other postproduction items can be added to improve the quality of the videos. In this next section we discuss the equipment and steps needed to create a pre­recorded video lesson. If you would like to flip your classroom but are concerned about the time commitment for making videos, consider spending one year recording all your live direct instruction. By simply pressing Record before each lesson and Stop at the end, over the course of one year you will build a Flip Your Classroom 37  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom library of videos. After doing so, you can decide what to do with the videos and how to restructure your class. This method does not require any additional work, comes at a minimal monetary cost, and is the easiest way to head toward a flipped class. Video-Making Equipment Our videos are very inexpensive to make. All we have is screen­casting software, a computer, a pen-tablet input device, a microphone, and a webcam. Most newer computers today have a microphone and webcam built in, so the only two things you will need to purchase are the pen-tablet input device and the software. Screencasting software. Screencasting software captures what- ever is on your computer screen. If you are showing a PowerPoint presentation, it records the presentation. If you are navigating to a web page, it captures your navigation. If you are annotating on the computer, it will record your pen strokes. When a micro- phone is set up, it also records voice. There are many different screencasting programs available. Some are free and open source, some are for Windows computers, some for Macintosh, and some for Linux. Presently, we use Camtasia Studio to make our record- ings. The key is not to get caught up in which software to use, but rather, to find a program that works for you, in your situation. Pen annotation. As teachers of a mathematically based science class, we find the pen annotation feature indispensable. We need to be able to write on our screen. The primary software we use is Microsoft PowerPoint. It has a pen annotation feature that we use extensively. We have begun experimenting with SMART software because we recently received SMART boards in our classrooms, but any interactive whiteboard software includes a pen feature. If your videos require pen annotation, there are quite a few hard- ware options available. These devices range in price from a very inexpensive USB pen tablet (less than $60) to interactive white- boards (upwards of $4,000). There are many manufacturers of the tablets, which plug into a computer. One of the most popular 38 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 examples of such a device is the Wacom Bamboo. The next tier of devices is wireless tablets. These tablets are made by a variety of manufacturers and can be obtained for between $200 and $400. These devices work the same as the wired tablets. We recommend these if teachers are planning on recording some or all of their lessons live. The advantage to a wireless tablet is that you can move around the room as you present content to students. Teachers can also use a tablet PC. These devices have the pen functionality built in. Frankly, we are not big fans of tablet PCs because you pay extra money for a computer. Jonathan bought his first wireless tablet in 2001. Since then, he has gone through seven computers—yet he still has his original wireless tablet, and it continues to work. If he had originally purchased a tablet PC, he would have had to replace seven tablet PCs, which would have been much more expensive than purchasing one wireless tablet and replacing seven standard PCs. Interactive whiteboard. Interactive whiteboards are designed for annotation. Many teachers we know use their interactive white- boards to record their lessons. The only disadvantage to these is that you have to be in your classroom to make the recordings. We like the flexibility of recording at home, in a hotel room in Atlanta, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or in the classrooms of colleagues interested in flipping. Some schools that have used interactive whiteboards as their main devices have purchased a few of the USB tablets for teachers to take home to make some of the videos. Microphone. Microphones also vary in price and functionality. Most newer laptops have built-in microphones. However, in our experience, many of these microphones are not of very high quality. We recommend that you create a recording, play it back, and see what you think. You can also purchase external micro- phones for under $10 at a local big box retailer. These are not the highest quality, but they work. An advantage to an external microphone is that it won’t record the sounds of clicking a mouse or track pad that a built-in microphone will. Flip Your Classroom 39  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom When we started recording, we recorded live. We realized we wanted to be mobile as we taught, so we researched wireless options. There are a number of relatively decent wireless micro- phones that can be obtained for about $50. We found wireless USB headsets that gamers use with the Xbox to work quite well. When we started recording together, we realized the microphones we were using were not going to pick up both of our voices very well. Thus we began to research higher quality microphones. We found a USB microphone that was studio quality and have been very happy with its performance. When we introduced the flipped classroom to our foreign language teachers, they required high sound fidelity to capture appropriate voice inflections and pronunciation. They were not happy with the performance of any of the cheaper microphones and subsequently purchased a higher quality microphone. Webcam. Most newer laptops come with a built-in webcam, so this is most likely all you need, but you may need to purchase one to add this feature. We regularly use a webcam and the PIP feature to include science demonstrations that are either unsafe or too lengthy to conduct in class. We record our lesson, pause the recording, then turn the webcam onto the science demon- stration and resume the recording to capture the event. Recording software. The recording software we use has a picture- in-picture (PIP) feature we really like. It will capture a webcam shot of the presenter(s) while they record. After recording the session, we can use the editing features to change the size and position of the PIP. At first we wondered if this would be distracting to students, but when we surveyed them, they told us they liked seeing our faces. “You aren’t just a disembodied voice talking to us—you’re a real person.” Video camera. Once we started experimenting with our webcam, we quickly realized that there is great value in creating more than a screencast. Screencasts form the backbone of our videos, but putting in short clips from a video camera has turned out to be a powerful addition to our videos. We purchased a digital video 40 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 camera from a big box retailer, and we shoot clips as often as we can. Some of these clips involve scientific experiments: we have set things on fire, and we have zoomed in closely to see scien- tific phenomena. We also shoot clips whenever and wherever we see science in the world around us. In doing so, we bring the world to our students. When Jonathan was in Peru, his son shot some video of Jonathan explaining the geology of the Andes Mountains. When we were in Washington, D.C., speaking at a conference, we talked about the chemistry of diamonds in front of the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian. We did not spend a great deal of money on equipment to begin flipping our classrooms. We started with the tablet, added the software, and then over time upgraded to a better quality micro- phone, a stand-alone webcam, and eventually a digital video camera. Making your own high-quality videos is no longer expensive. Anybody can create them with minimal expense. Stages in Making a Video When we make our videos, there are four stages: planning the lesson, recording the video, editing the video, and then publishing the video. 1. Planning the lesson. First determine the objective of your lesson and decide whether a video is an appropriate instructional tool to accomplish the educational goal of the lesson. If a video of direct instruction is not the best tool, then do not proceed with these steps. If it is, please continue. Remember, flipping is not just about making videos for your class. Although most educators who have flipped their classes use screencast videos, there are teachers who have implemented all of the educational ideas in this book without using a single video. When we began, we already had a series of PowerPoint files we had used for our lectures for years. We simply recorded video using those same slides, and we recommend that you also begin recording using material you have already created. Early in our flipping adventure, we were not as conscientious about Flip Your Classroom 41  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom what should be recorded and what should not. We simply recorded everything we had lectured on in the past. As we have matured in our process, we have begun to eliminate certain videos from our curriculum that are redundant, unnecessary, or ineffective. As you continue making more and more videos, start to alter your existing material to be better suited for a screencast. After a while you will become comfortable with the features of the screencasting software you are using, so plan for those features. For example, if you would like to add video clips, leave blank slides as a mental note and placeholder for clips to be inserted after the fact. If you know you will be working out problems using a digital pen, leave blank slides for writing. If you would like to use a calculator emulator, leave space on slides for the calculator to be displayed. Want to use a webcam? Be sure to have a place on your screen where it will reside. Thus, the more complex your final video product will be, the more you need to plan. 2. Recording the video. Recording the lesson entails sitting at your computer or interactive white board with a micro- phone, webcam, writing device, or document camera. You simply “teach” the lesson to your absent audience, pausing occasionally to plan what will be said next, or to correct a mistake. We have found that some teachers are more comfortable working from a script or outline, and that’s fine. However, we do not write a script. This is for two main reasons: (1) our slide show serves as enough of an outline that we, as veteran teachers, can simply impro- vise adequate conversation to teach the material, and (2) a script would simply hinder our spontaneity and creativity. We prefer our lessons to be more conversational and less formal. Our students have told us that they prefer conver- sational videos featuring both of us; thus, we make time to create these together to include this dynamic. However, our videos tend to run long, and a script or more focused instruction would lead to a shorter video. As always, know what your students need and give it to them. 42 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 3. Editing the video. You can do as much or as little editing as you want. When we first recorded our lessons, we did no postproduction editing. We simply recorded our lesson and published it for student use. Eventually, we discovered the added value of postproduction editing, and we now spend considerable time editing. The editing process is time consuming, but it allows the teacher to remove mistakes instead of rerecording an entire video. It also allows the teacher to highlight and reinforce what has been said in the recording with a visual cue that can aid in student understanding. During the editing process you can insert videos, change picture-in-picture settings, zoom in and out to various areas of the screen, and add text callouts (think VH-1 Pop Up Video from the early 1990s). We discuss these video elements in the next section. When commercial film producers make videos, they spend much more time editing than recording. As classroom teachers, we realize we do not have the luxury of spending too much time editing. Although we do edit, we do not go over the top with the amount of time we spend on it. Our editing rule of thumb: Do I need this video perfect, or do I need it Tuesday? 4. Publishing the video. Last, publish the video for your students to view. The big question with teachers inter- ested in making their own videos is “Where do I put the videos so all students can view them?” The answer to this question is different for every teacher, school, and district. Every IT department is different, every school acceptable-use policy is different, and how a school makes these available for students will vary. We currently post our videos on an online hosting site, our internal district servers, and locally on the computers in our classroom; we also burn them on a DVD for students without internet access. Your solution to this will depend on the needs of your students, their access to technology, and the current availability of online video hosting sites. There are so many different ways to get the videos out to your students. Our suggestion is to pick one or two methods that meet the needs of your students and do them well. Flip Your Classroom 43  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom How to Make Videos Your Students Will Love So you’re ready to make your own videos. You have your equip- ment, and you want to try flipping your classroom. We want to give you some suggestions that will make your videos better. First of all, realize that you won’t make your best videos on your first try. It takes practice, trial and error, and more practice. What works for some videos will not work for others. When we first started making our own videos, they were not very good. Over time, our videos have gotten better. Give yourself some time and you, too, can make high-quality educational videos for your students. There are a few things we have learned which we now call our Cardinal Video Rules. 1. Keep it short. We are teaching the YouTube generation, and they want things in bite-sized pieces. If you are teaching the quadratic formula, teach just the quadratic formula. Do not teach anything else. When we first started making videos, they lasted the same length of time as our typical lectures. Most of our lectures contained multiple objec- tives. This is fine in a live setting, but in a video setting we have found that we need to stick to one topic per video. We try to keep our videos under 15 minutes and really shoot for under 10 minutes. Our mantra here: one topic equals one video. 2. Animate your voice. When you are making these videos, you are most likely using some sort of presentation soft- ware (e.g., PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote, Smart Notebook). The only thing you have to engage your students besides your slides is your pen and your voice. Change the inflec- tion of your voice. Make the videos exciting. We found as we got more proficient with the software, we were able to relax and be ourselves more and more in front of a computer. If you choose to make your videos live in front of students, the inflection is more natural. However, if you are talking to a computer, it is especially important to animate your voice and make it interesting. Jonathan changes his voice. He jumps into a mixture of a Russian/ 44 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 German/French/Italian/Scottish/indiscernible-dialect accent on occasion. Some students find this amusing, and they never know when he might mix it up for them. Don’t be discouraged if your first videos are not very good. You will get better as you make more videos. Embrace the learning process. 3. Create the video with another teacher. There is something powerful about watching two people having a conversa- tion instead of watching one teacher talk at the viewer. Not often do you listen to a radio show and hear only one person talking. Think about your morning commute. When was the last time you heard only one voice? Radio stations realize that a conversation is far more engaging than a single talking head. Our students told us the same thing. Two heads (and voices) are better than one. Students learn more. Because we have both been teaching for quite some time, we know which topics students will typically struggle with, so one of us usually takes on the role of the student learning the material while the other takes on the role of an expert. Students tell us this dialogue is helpful in their comprehension of the material. This also has been a great way to introduce other teachers to the flipped classroom. Jonathan started teaching his freshmen using the flipped-mastery model in 2009 and did it all alone. In 2010 our whole team of freshman science teachers embraced the model. For the most part, they are using Jonathan’s videos. However, he is slowly making videos with different teachers. When they make them together, Jonathan runs the technology while the other teacher acts as the expert (which they really are). This has brought the other science teachers into the video produc- tion process. Some of these teachers have been reluctant to embrace the flipped model because they were simply afraid of the technology required to create the videos. Now, working with Jonathan, they realize that they can just have a conversation that is recorded for their students. Flip Your Classroom 45  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom 4. Add humor. We typically have some sort of a running joke in our videos. We usually do this for the first minute of each video. Students either love these or hate them. Because they know the joke will take up the first minute, those who like our weird sense of humor tune in, and those who don’t just fast-forward. In one video series, we had a running joke in which Jonathan was trying to find out which instrument he should play. Invariably, he was poor at almost all of his instruments. Eventually he found the harmonica and played it quite well. Things like these bring interest and a certain wackiness to the videos, which helps keep the students interested. 5. Don’t waste your students’ time. Do not waste students’ time. We’ve watched teacher-made videos where teachers talk about their favorite football team for five minutes. Students are watching this on their own time, and this sort of discussion wastes that time. Keep to your topic. 6. Add annotations. Think of your screen as a whiteboard with cool pictures. Use annotation equipment to add pen markups. We do not think we would ever have embraced the flipped classroom if the annotation feature had not been available. Because we primarily teach chemistry, we need some sort of a digital chalkboard to write on. Solving complex chemical problems has always involved writing. Having a way to digitally write on the screen, at least for us, allowed the flipped classroom to become a reality. 7. Add callouts. We incorporate a fair amount of postproduc- tion editing in which we can add callouts. A callout is a text box, a shape, or some other object that will appear for a while in the video and then disappear. Our students have found these very helpful because they bring their attention to the key elements in a video. We also use these to show steps in a problem. For example, we use the callouts to list the steps in the process. We state these steps during the recording, but also reemphasize them visually with the callouts. 46 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 8. Zoom in and out. In the postproduction editing, we zoom in to different portions of the screen. Often the impor- tant part of the screen is not the entire screen. Having the ability to zoom adds to student comprehension. For example, when we do a mathematical problem, we zoom in to the onscreen calculator. Or, when we are highlighting a portion of a picture on screen, we can zoom in to the portion of the picture that is most important for compre- hension. This not only emphasizes a particular item, but it declutters the screen and helps the students focus. 9. Keep it copyright friendly. Because these videos will likely be posted online, make sure that you follow all appropriate copyright laws. We are not copyright lawyers, nor do we play them on TV. Please consult experts in this area to ensure that you do not infringe on the copyrights of others. Class Time Once you have set up your flipped class and made your videos, you will find yourself with extra time, a luxury you probably have never had in your career as a teacher. This leads to the inevi- table question that all teachers who flip must ask, “What will I do with the additional class time?” Recently we were speaking at a conference in British Columbia, and as we presented, one young teacher asked a rather insightful question: “If I use your model, what will I do with my kids each day in class?” She realized that most of her time in class was spent standing in front of the room and talking to her students. If her “talking” was prerecorded, what would she do each day? This led to a great conversation about what kinds of activities would truly engage her students. Despite the attention that the videos get, the greatest benefit to any flipped classroom is not the videos. It’s the in-class time that every teacher must evaluate and redesign. Because our direct instruction was moved outside of the classroom, our students were able to conduct higher quality and more engaging activities. Flip Your Classroom 47  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom As we have seen teachers adopt the flipped model, they use the extra time in myriad ways depending on their subject matter, location, and style of teaching. We asked some of our colleagues to share how they have changed their class time. Following are some examples. Foreign Language Classes In foreign language classes, teachers are recording grammar lessons and conversation starters so as to create time in class to use the language more practically. This includes having more conversation, reading literature, and writing stories, all in the target language. We visited one of these classes, a level 1 class, and observed students actively speaking Spanish. They were responding and gesturing in ways that corresponded to the teacher’s instructions, which were entirely in Spanish. He would then ask students questions, and they would respond in Spanish. He reported to us how the videos had freed him up to do more of these engaging activities in his classroom. Math Classes Math teachers are finding the time to really help their students engage with deep analysis of mathematical concepts. Others are embracing math manipulatives and emerging technologies where students are engaged not just in learning the algorithmic computation, but in deeply wrestling with the intricacies of the math concepts. Flipped math classes are becoming laboratories of computational thinking, inquiry, and connectedness with other STEM areas (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Science Classes One concern about the flipped classroom that has been recently posed is whether flipping is compatible with an inquiry approach to teaching science. We and others have responded with a resounding yes. Flipping a science class creates more time and more opportunities to include inquiry learning. In science 48 Flip Your Classroom  How to Implement the Flipped Classroom CHAP TER 4 classes, teachers who flip have time for students to engage in more inquiry-based activities and to conduct more in-depth experiments. In the chemistry education community, POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning; www.pogil.org), has become a powerful tool for students to create conceptual under- standing without direct instruction. The flipped classroom is ideally set up for this type of learning, and we have incorporated many POGIL activities into our classroom. When a well-written POGIL activity is conducted well, the students learn all they need to learn via guided inquiry, and there is no need to teach the material with a video. In cases such as this, we use the POGIL activity as the instructional tool in lieu of a video. However, we have found that some students still use our instructional videos as a secondary resource for remediation. Social Science/Language Arts/Humanities Classes Social science instructors report using their extra time to discuss current events in light of the previous night’s instructional video. Others are finding time to delve deeply into original document analysis. There is more time to debate, give speeches, conduct pro se court, and discuss what students are learning more deeply and without having to worry about a deep conversation being interrupted by a bell. There’s plenty of time to write, write, write, and even more time to analyze and discuss each other’s writing through peer review. Physical Education Classes We have been surprised to hear that some of the teachers most excited about flipped classrooms were physical education teachers. This dynamic team of teachers realized the flipped class had great potential in their courses. They told us that the most important aspect of the physical education class is for their students to be moving. Physical education teachers report that they spend too much time teaching students things like the rules of games and some of the techniques. When teachers began making videos (with a video camera) of rules, students can come Flip Your Classroom 49  CHAP TER 4 How to Implement the Flipped Classroom to class and quickly get to moving their bodies and participating in the important physical education activities. Project-Based Learning Another concern is whether or not a flipped class is compat- ible with project-based learning. Again, we cheer yes. We love the idea of discovery-based learning driven by student interest. Most of us do not operate in an environment that allows for this, but educationally speaking, it is enticing and has great benefit. Picture a class driven by student-identified problems or interests. Students are exploring a real-world problem and developing solu- tions, and then suddenly realize that they need to know how to perform a particular mathematical function in order to execute their solution. The teacher now faces a decision. Does she spend valuable class time teaching the entire class how to perform the appropriate math and risk boring the advanced student and losing the student who struggles? Or does she create an instructional video (or perhaps access an archived one) to give the students what they need, without sacrificing class time for direct instruction? Marrying the technological tools and asynchronous content delivery used in a flipped classroom with a student-directed approach to deciding what is learned can create an environ- ment in whic