What to Flip in a Flipped Class

This is adapted from my book, Deeper Learning Through Technology: How to Use the Cloud to Individualize Instruction, which comes out on the 27th (and you can pre-order now).  

WHAT TO FLIP IN A FLIPPED CLASSROOM          

To say you should take your current PowerPoints and break them down into segments of video for your students would be to miss the point.  You might want to first think of what is going to be done in class and then make a flipped video of the background needed to prepare for that work.  If, for example, you were looking at William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, you might want to give students an exercise looking at the main points that Golding was trying to make and his view of our society.  These would be tough questions that students might need assistance in understanding.  A flipped video on Golding’s life and how he was led to his beliefs and subsequent writing of the book, would be a good topic for your video.  This video could even include the short clip found online of Golding’s thoughts on his well known book.

Once you have your lesson and the video idea ready, you will need to line up what

you need for the flipped overview.  I usually include a few Presentation slides since written words often help student comprehension. I also have additional tabs set up on my browser.  Perhaps a very short clip from theLord of the Flies movie might enhance your presentation as would a picture of Golding.  Once these assets are set up, it makes it easy to move through the parts of the video remembering that it is okay to have bloopers as students seem to like it when their teachers appear more human in a video.  Adding in personal touches also make the videos more interesting for your students.  My own children have all had cameos in my instructional videos as have the family pets!  

Flipping, though, does not need to be limited to teachers.  If administrators truly want to initiate a flipped school, they need to model the practice.  If teachers are watching the videos, then students aren’t either and administrators need to learn how to maximize watching so as to work with teachers and students to do the same.  How many times has a school started a new initiative and had training sessions.  Why not give people the option of watching a short video instead.  What about an opening day speech when teachers would prefer to be working on lesson plans.  Have them watch a 10 minute video (or shorter) and answer key questions, much as teachers would want their students to do.  Modeling the practice over and over is the best way to sell flipping to your teachers.

It is important to note that it is okay to use videos from other educators as long as they fit your needs.  Use your Twitter/Google+/Google search engines to look for flipped videos on your topic.  Ask your Twitter followers for recommendations or send a message to someone with a large Twitter following and see if they can help point you in the right direction. There is a growing library of short videos on the Internet that you can add to your digital library by bookmarking them for later use.   

Want to learn how to make a flipped video, get more guidance on where to find flipped videos or even how to use Twitter to benefit your teaching, then you might want to buy.

Below is a flipped video I created on essay writing so my students could do the hard part (ie write the essay) in class.