What's new this year?

A #flipblogs contribution

Here is the prompt for this post:

School here does not begin until September 5, so I thankfully have some time yet to keep thinking through the changes (though the panic is starting to set in). Here are some of the things I've been mulling over so far:

First, an imposed change: a new school!

After almost 10 years at my previous post, the complexities of my school board's staffing process have moved me to a new school for the upcoming school year. It remains to be seen how this will affect my flip.

Possible effects:

• My new admin team may be more or less supportive of the model than the team with whom I originally learned about flipping. Will I need to become more of an advocate for flipping, or will I find others already flipping classes at the school?
• My much-reduced commute may make it easier for me to produce the microvideos in a more timely fashion, without sacrificing as much sleep. Perhaps I'll even be able to find an appropriate space to do the necessary filming at school, and just save the editing for home.
• ???

Standards-based grading + the flip

I learned about standards-based grading months before but within the same year that I learned about flipped learning. I am ever striving to grow in both and make both easier for me to embrace. This year, I would like to make each video (or set of multiple videos, if needed) reflect a particular learning goal, rather than a section of the textbook, so that students wishing to deepen or correct their understanding related to a particular goal can more easily track down the material that would be most helpful for them to review. I'd also like to plan out ahead of time (i.e., now) which learning goals will require videos (and which I already know will require more than one), to act as a sort of checklist for myself so I can track throughout the semester whether I’m on top of video creation & posting.

In class

I have fallen into the rut of just having students do repetitive practice work in class. Yes, it's great that I'm there to answer their questions as they work on it, but...boring! I need to make the in-class portion of the course more engaging & worthwhile for students. Consistently bringing in the right choice of class activities will entice the students to get their video-viewing “homework” done before class, so they don’t miss out on the better part of the class while they're stuck doing a make-up viewing of the video. I've been working my way through the Flipped Learning Certification course, and I'm hoping the section of the course that deals with "what to do in class" will be inspiring here.

Video concerns

I know I need to make my videos shorter -- hopefully focusing each on a learning goal will help that -- and I need to be more cheerful and animated in them. I've often used a webcam to record my face in a picture-in-picture way while the larger area of the screen shows a PowerPoint or a document camera records what I'm writing out on the table surface by hand. I've noticed Jon Bergmann uses something in his certification course videos that I think is called a light board (at least, that's a term I've come across other flippers using, and it would make sense), and I'm wondering if exploring using one of those rather than pre-written slides may help...but don't I lose some ability to bring in visuals if I do that?

Thoughts on logistics

When I met with my new department heads one day in June, it came up that students at the school are familiar with Google Classroom, as well as using their school-board-provided Gmail address. I am not very familiar with Classroom, so I want to explore it some this summer to see if it is a good fit for what I want to do with my flip, or if I should continue to use other platforms.

This summer is the first time I have heard of the "in-flip," leading me to wonder if I should do the in-flip on purpose for the whole semester with one or more of my classes (as opposed to just during the initial training period of helping the students learn how to watch the videos well). I suppose this will depend on the kind of kids/classes I get.

Over to you...

I'm looking forward to reading what other #flipblogs folks are considering changing. Usually, we make changes because something feels broken, so I can learn just as much from seeing what you want to change away from as what you are considering changing to.