My context, my ideal flipped practice, and obstacles to my flipping

A little over 3 weeks into the school year (our school year began on Sept. 5), and I am finally typing up my first blog post for the year. Well, the beginning of the year is always a bit of a whirlwind, isn't it? I think I'll just pat myself on the back for feeling I can take the time to blog this early, rather than regret not doing any reflective blogging earlier.

Here is the #flipblogs topic that was due today, although I'm posting this too late for the actual chat (which will have ended by now), and I'm going into much detail in this post about things unrelated to this topic as well:

The context in which I work

Given that I interact with flippers from other jurisdictions, perhaps some would appreciate a bit of an explanation of the context in which I'm aiming to flip. (Those already familiar with or not interested in such details can feel free to skip this section.)

In high school courses in my province, there's a a required 70% / 30% split between the assessments given during the term and the final summative assessments given at the end of the term. (The final assessment for a course could be a 30% final written exam, for example, or split between a 15% final lab exam and a 15% final written exam, or some other combination of final products.) We're also required to assess our students in four categories: Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking and Inquiry, Communication, and Application. (Yes, "Thinking" is one of the categories, as if thinking isn't required in any of the others, and yes, I know they're probably trying to use that name to emphasize higher-order thinking skills, but it still sounds ridiculous...but I digress.)

My department (among many others province-wide) has broken the 70% total term work down into prescribed percentages for each course. For the academic-level courses I teach, for example, our breakdown looks like this:

Knowledge and Understanding - 25%
Thinking and Inquiry - 20%
Communication - 15%
Application - 10%

I am teaching only grade 9 and 10 science this year, and each of those courses consists of four units (biology, chemistry, physics, and an earth & space topic — astronomy in grade 9, climate change in grade 10). The category percentages given above can then be considered to also be broken across those four units; the Thinking and Inquiry marks, for example, can be thought of as 5% coming from each of the four units. (This is of course assuming the teacher is professional enough to adequately address all four units in their practice. I will make that assumption here.)

My ideal flipping practice 

Within this framework, I have been trying to use a type of standards-based grading with my students. In my system, for example, the Knowledge and Understanding (KU) marks are based on a set of learning goals that are in turn based on the KU-related specific expectations in that course’s provincially-mandated curriculum. I design my quizzes and other assessments with these learning goals in mind, and record the marks per goal accordingly. This is sometimes a little tricky for students to understand in cases when a quiz consists of questions for more than one learning goal (“So what’s my overall mark for this quiz?” “Well, your mark doesn’t work that way, but let’s look at how you’re doing in each of these learning goals and across the course as a whole...”). The advantage to them, however, is that if they take the initiative to get extra help from me and study in their own time to gain a better understanding of a concept or better performance of a skill than they previously gave evidence of, they are able to ask me to reassess them on those learning goals and get their former mark bumped up. If I understand the standards-based grading movement correctly, my method isn’t entirely SBG. However, I think this system preserves SBG’s opportunity to show evidence of post-assessment growth while still working within the requirement that in the end I must report only one overall percentage grade (not several goal-related levels) as a final rating of the student.

So how is this related to flipping? Easy: I would like each learning goal to have a dedicated video or set of videos. I would like to be able to give students (and/or have posted online) a unit plan that outlines what the learning goals are for the unit (and the category for each), what videos contain the direct instruction on those learning goals, what textbook material addresses the same content if they’d prefer to use that in place of or as a complement to the video, and what assessment is planned of that goal. This would give students a consistent structure for their initial instruction on a topic, and it would also act as a great reference through which they could find the appropriate information for quiz/test review (and for further reviewing material prior to asking for any reassessment on failed or mediocrely-passed learning goals).

So that’s a glimpse at the direct instruction and assessment pieces of my ideal flipping practice. Through the certification course and interacting with the flipping community, though, I’ve been learning that stopping there would be bad flipping. Video-worksheet-video-worksheet (and eventually a quiz based on those worksheets) is not what flipping is about. Being able to do more experiments in science classes because of time freed up by flipping is great, but only using flip-freed time to do experiments can be a mistake as well. I had a tendency in the past to describe one benefit of flipping as the available presence of the expert leader (the teacher) when the students are doing their work — “If you get stuck in a question, I’m there for you to ask questions and get help!” While this is true, I am learning that the in-class time should ideally at least part of the time take advantage of the opportunity the class has to be a learning community together, helping to build each other’s understanding of the topic under study.

Obstacles I need to overcome

So, full disclosure: I have not yet started to flip my classes this year. I believe in flipping, I try to help others better understand flipping, I participate in some of the hashtag and Slack chats about flipping as I'm able, I'm working on my trainer certification...so why aren't my attempts to flip this year off the ground yet?

1. A lack of focused time, when the process requires a front-end investment of time on the part of the teacher

Let’s see; to pull off my ideal practice, I must:

• translate the official curriculum document for each of my courses into categorized learning goals written in student-friendly language 
• determine how each goal could be assessed 
• determine how much of the student’s grade will come from my assessment of each goal (some may even be worth 0% of their grade — our provincial guidelines do state that teachers can decide that certain curriculum expectations will not be assessed, though they must still be addressed in instruction somehow)
• create (and edit, upload, link, etc.) the videos related to the learning goals
• create any advanced organizers (fill-in-the-blank sheets) I want students to fill in as they watch the video
• design not only practice work but also other additional in-class activities that support the students' learning of these goals
• actually do that assessing, recording of marks, and providing of feedback (marking never goes away, no matter what the model, right?)
• make time for students wanting extra help and reassessment on learning goals for which they want to boost their understanding / marks

Not all of the above is unique to flipped learning (or my own goals for it), of course, but this is an overview of what's on my mind when it comes to my courses. There is also of course other stuff of teaching on top of this -- accommodating special education needs, differentiating the course activities in any additional needed way, communicating with home, participating in the life of the school, carrying out any administrative tasks required, etc.

I know that flipped learning is not about the videos, but in my particular practice, video is an important part of it. I prefer to do the direct instruction through videos because I believe my students need to see and hear ME as they receive the direct instruction -- although I will leave the "why" behind that for now (potential future post topic?). But creating those videos, as well as the learning goals and all the other "me-created" stuff mentioned above, takes time, and I have not yet figured out when in my schedule of ongoing activities that video-creation time can best happen. With two kids at home (one of them only a year old, still nursing and otherwise pretty needy of my attention from the time I get him from daycare to the time I drop him off again) and a husband who works a fair commute away (and sometimes has evening meetings to boot), it's hard for me to find focused time to work undisturbed at home, yet the little one's needs mean I can't just stay long at school every day. I'm already trying to do what I can to avoid nights being too late and the days too exhausted, yet because I do believe flipping is well worth the initial time investment I am going to have to find a way to make it work.

(I did know this was all coming. I started the little one at daycare in early August, when he was 11 months old, planning to use the month to get some great pre-planning done. Of course he promptly got sick with a series of fevers that prevented him from attending daycare most days in August. C'est la vie in the world of parenting young ones, but they're also only small once...)

2. A need to learn how to use the group space in non-traditional ways.

Okay, I'll admit I have been a pretty traditional teacher. I have done a lot of the "chalk-and-talk, then-assign-textbook-or-worksheet-exercises" formula. As a science teacher, I have had my classes do experiments and computer-based simulations, sure. As a math teacher, yes, I've had my classes use manipulatives. I've also done some "hey, get in groups, write up one of your answers on a piece of chart paper, and let's see if we're all on the same page." But I feel like I still have a lot to learn about how to best use the group space, and figuring out how to best spend the time freed up by removing the direct instruction from the classroom takes planning time (and stretches planning brain muscles!) that I'm, again, still trying to figure out. So I'll keep asking this question in the flip community and keep interacting with more experienced flippers to see what you all are doing, and how I can learn from you!

3. Perfectionism

When I create my videos, I use Camtasia, and I edit out just about every "uh," "ah," or too-loud click if my mouth opens funny. While recording, if I don't like how I said something, I pause, then start again, knowing I can edit out the previous attempt. In contrast, one of my colleagues just started flipping this semester, and he says he doesn't even listen to his podcasts, lest he get too picky about them -- he just records and immediately uploads. His production time is obviously a fraction of mine, and that is no criticism of him. So part of my struggle with time is because of time I know I'd spend "perfectionizing" not only the videos, but every other "me-created" part of the process outlined above. This is an area in which I know I need to grow (or scale back, depending on how you look at it).

So there you have it. I'm coming back to teaching this year after a year off for maternity leave, and I think I'm doing OK adjusting overall. I'm not yet where I want to be, but hopefully my students would agree that we're muddling through this well enough together so far, and that once I do get us flipping someday hopefully soon, it will have been worth the wait. It may just end up being for review purposes for this semester's crowd, and aiming for a fuller flip next semester, when I'll have a simpler set of courses, but we'll see!

Problems solved by flipping

The next #flipblogs Twitter hashtag chat will be on Aug. 30 (8pm EDT). What's it about?

This is going to be more off-the-cuff and less polished than my other #flipblogs entries so far, because I think my thoughts here aren't any that need a lot of words. Here's a brief look at how flipping has helped me:

Actually teach the noisy class - those who would have been willing to listen to the lecture & annoyed by disruptions from less-interested classmates could get on with the learning by viewing the video - but surprisingly I found those who were often disruptive during a lecture were much more attentive to the video than they had been to me!

Multiply my efforts - sometimes I feel the need to clone myself if multiple students want extra help on multiple different topics from a unit. The videos are likely not enough, but they are a good starting point & a springboard into teacher-student discussions.

Absent students - the videos help those catch up who were absent, and those who are attending a suspension program offsite can more easily stay connected to the flow of the course

Absent teacher! - I unfortunately had to be away several more days than ideal the last couple of school years. Flipping helped keep the class on track when I was away and no subject-specialist supply teacher was available. I could either have the video projected (provided there was someone available to do the initial setup for the sub) or have the students use individual computers (provided the computer lab/cart was available).

Prelab demonstration - showing students what the performance of a lab looks like ahead of time, including pitfalls (and safety hazards) to avoid, to reduce the amount of time spent in-class on lab instructions (though some safety review in person is still important). Shorter lead-in time in-class means more time for the experiment (less rushing, greater level of safety, more thoughtful reflection on what they're actually doing and why).

Differentiated instruction - differentiation of pace of instruction -- no one has to feel he or she is holding back the class, or that he or she is being held back by the needs of others.

The tyranny of the curriculum/challenging math problems - chemical equilibrium calculations for titrations in particular can take a loooong time to go over, and there are many spots where students can trip up. Flipping involved topics allows students to process them at the pace they need -- there are steps they just need to stare at for a while & don't really need anything more from me other than processing time, and that time is best given in the individual space rather than spend group space time on it. Better use of time = less worry about how I'm going to "cover"/address the entire curriculum.

That's what I've been able to think of so far...

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.

Addendum to the beginning of my journey: Step Zero

But wait...how did you know how to flip your classroom?

Whooooops. My bad.

I was so determined to finally finish my previous post after letting it collect dust for 4 years, I left out a key step -- as well as the acknowledgement of some key influencers. To be fair, though, I only engaged in this step a little before I jumped into Step 1; I went back to it the summer after I started my flip.

Still, before I could realistically try to flip my classroom, I had to engage at least a little in a crucial step:

Step 0: Educate yourself.

Listening to a few experienced flippers talk about what they did was certainly informative and inspiring, but what they presented was necessarily just a taste of the "why" and the "how," not a step-by-step instruction manual. In fact, as I've learned, there really is no one-size-fits-all, step-by-step instruction manual for flipping one's class, because there is all sorts of room for teachers to use the basic model in their own way. (Yes, I realize the irony of making that statement when I have outlined some steps in my last post and this one. Let's consider these general guidelines rather than detailed steps, shall we?) Even so, there are necessarily a large number of things to figure out before one can flip successfully, and so I took to the 'net to do some research before I did the write-up for my class that I mentioned in my "step 1."

Some of the sources I consulted before I tried flipping and early into my experiments with it are listed below:

1. Dianne Fitzpatrick's blog - http://fitzeehasflippedout.blogspot.ca/

Since Fitzpatrick had been one of our hosts during our visit to Peel, her blog was a natural first start.

2. Katie Gimbar - Fitzpatrick and Simona Matei mentioned Gimbar in their presentation to our team. Gimbar can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Katie-Gimbars-Flipped-Classroom-182274291823666/, but the most helpful thing to me was her series of FAQ videos about flipping that can be seen here.

3. Crystal Kirch - Kirch was also mentioned as a helpful resource in Fitzpatrick and Matei's presentation. I sheepishly admit that at first I just got overwhelmed by Kirch's blog and thought it wouldn't be helpful to me at all...I was wrong, wrong, wrong! (Sorry, Crystal!) I am so glad I took another look at it the summer after I started trying to flip, because it is chock full of amazingly helpful stuff. Check out her blog at http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.ca/.

Kirch's influence on my flipping goes beyond her blog. When I e-mailed her to ask permission to download some materials from her site for my own use and to share with a colleague, she was very willing to share anything that was posted, and suggested I also take a look at her actual course sites (the ones she used with students, vs. the teacher-oriented blog I'd been browsing). Those course sites made such an impression on me that I patterned my own course sites in much the same way in the following years. (I realize that when I set this blog up 4 years ago, I ended up patterning it after hers as well; I didn't really think anything would come of this space at the time.)

Kirch also pointed me to several Twitter handles I should check out run by other Canadian flippers, and she tweeted my own handle out to the #flipclass community to help me get connected to the support of that network. Kirch herself can be found on Twitter as @crystalkirch.

4. The #flipclass community on Twitter - admittedly, I kept missing the weekly hashtag chat, but the chat and otherwise searching for the tag found me a whole new family of helpful education professionals and organizations to follow. Thank you, everyone who's shared your thoughts in this chat -- we may feel vulnerable when we share, but as we all share, we all grow together.

5. Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams - the authors of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. I'm also currently working my way through the self-directed Flipped Learning Certification Level - I course available through the Flipped Learning Global Initiative, and it is Bergmann who appears in each of the courses' videos. I'm a chem teacher, they're chem teachers, I was bound to like them :). Check Bergmann out on Twitter at @jonbergmann, and Aaron Sams at @chemicalsams.

As I keep growing (and getting too distracted to check in and then coming back to try to reconnect again), I keep finding new connections of support I can make to grow in my flipping. Some of my more recent connections are:

1. The #flipblogs chat that started up this summer -- see my first post for a little bit more info on that.

2. The Flipped Learning Slack Community -- I am very new to Slack, but the flipping community is as warm and supportive there as anywhere. Here's to seeing that community and the interaction there grow.

If I think of anyone else I've left out, I'll have to leave an addendum to this addendum, but in the meantime, if you're looking for resources, there are some links for you to check out!

The beginning of my Flipped Classroom journey

A #flipblog contribution...somewhat overdue.

I've always intended to start this blog with the tale of how my "flipped" journey began. This post has literally been years in the writing; joining the #flipblogs community has given me the incentive I need to pull it out of the Drafts folder, dust it off, update it, finish it up, and finally release it to the world to meet you all.

The topic for the August 2 #flipblogs chat was:

While this post comes too late to be part of that discussion, I did tell the community I would write up my response and post it "asynchronously." (I hope they will indulge me as I write more than "a few paragraphs.") It is, after all, the perfect place to start -- at the beginning.

How I was introduced to "flipping"

It started with a phone call.

In March 2013, one of my vice principals unexpectedly called me up during class and asked, "So, do you know who the funnest people in the school are?" He invited me to attend some professional development with him, our principal, our head librarian and our Student Success teacher. Honoured at being the only subject teacher invited (and amused at being invited to hang out with the "cool kids" for the day), I agreed to attend.

When I discovered that the PD would be about the "flipped classroom," I vaguely recalled having heard something about it before but didn't really know what it was about. I decided to go into the PD with a willingness to listen, though I'll admit I was somewhat skeptical.

On March 21, 2013, you might say my view of teaching...got flipped.

Our little group visited two different schools in the Peel District School Board. It turned out to be an intimate, exclusive event arranged for us by our principal, who had learned through her friendship with the schools' superintendent about the flipping that was going on in those schools and wanted to see whether this approach was something that our school could use as well.

Our first stop was Central Peel Secondary School, where Dianne Fitzpatrick and Simona Matei made a presentation to us explaining how they were flipping some of their classes. Looking back, there were three things that solidly impressed me about their flip:

1. Documented evidence of student buy-in.

Fitzpatrick shared with us some graphs representing her students' feedback at the end of a semester of flipping. I'm showing here the results we saw then, from January 2013 -- more detail is available in her blog post here -- but she has shared similar feedback from additional semesters on her blog:

WOW, I thought -- the students really like it! Of course, just because students like something doesn't mean it's good for their learning, but chances are they won't learn from an approach they hate, either. The research shows that there is a lot to be said for engagement, after all.

2. The potential to check in with every student, every day

Fitzpatrick and Matei shared with us in their presentation that flipping their class allowed them to visit with each student in the class every day. Given the research that emphasizes the role of the student-teacher relationship in a student's learning, this is huge -- could this put an end to quiet kids getting overlooked while more insistent students tap all the teacher's attention? Could this help break down walls between the teacher and resistant students?

3. She wasn't there...and they were working anyway.

Fitzpatrick was obviously not with her class while she presented to us -- they had a supply teacher. We visited her class partway through the period to find the students working hard on the assigned work anyway. Coming to class with the direct instruction already taken care of meant they didn't have to sit around reading from their textbooks or watching a movie as a class. Instead, they were able to jump right into engaging, whole-class activities...and they'd been able to develop the skills to engage in them well even without their regular teacher in the room.

Our second stop was at Castlebrooke Secondary School, where learned about the flipping Ve Anusic was doing with his math classes -- with such success that he had been featured in a CTV News clip. Through that clip, I again saw the extent to which the students were actually "doing stuff" in class, engaging with the material, and could see Anusic checking in and working with several of the students. Again, flipping seemed to greatly increase the potential for more one-on-one and smaller-group interactions between students and the teacher, as well as student-student interactions that were actually focused on the material.

So why did I start?

Honestly, all of the above may have been secondary to my reason to start trying "the flip." I, uh, may have started out of desperation.

In my grade 9 applied math class, the amount of energy I was putting into trying to maintain the students' attention during a lecture was getting out of hand. When work time came, many of them did work on the material, and asked questions, but the amount of time it took us to get through the direct instruction really ate into the time I was able to spend helping students. So...what if the students could get through the direct instruction bit themselves? Could that improve my ability to give each student the help that he or she needed? It was worth a shot. (I figured it couldn't hurt to try it with my grade 11 college classes, too.)

How I began*

Step 1: teach the students (and parents!) what flipping is, and justify it to them.
Both schools my team had visited had emphasized the need to actually teach the students how to watch the videos well (discouraging watching passively in a distracted environment, for example), but before I could even get there, I needed my students to understand what it was we were going to try. I set up a blog for each of my classes, and created a page on each linking to a couple of videos that described what the flipped classroom was all about. I also typed some details of how I thought we'd try it on the same page.

Our math department had a few carts of notebook computers available for teacher sign-out. One day, I brought the cart in, set everyone up with a wikispaces account, and set them to watching the videos and reading the information I'd posted about our upcoming flip. After going through all that, they filled out a survey for me, giving me their initial impressions of the idea. While there were a few concerns, overall they were very interested in trying it out.

That happened to be the day of parent-teacher interviews, so I was able to share with parents at the very start both the concept and (from the surveys) the students' reactions. The response I got from them was very positive.

I should note that since my principal was the person who'd initiated our investigation into flipped learning, and had also been impressed by the presentation, there was no need for me to touch base with my admin team before trying the flip, as teachers in other circumstances probably should.

Step 2: teach the students how to view the videos. 
I created a video outlining video-viewing tips as basic as "put your phone away...unless you're watching the video on your phone," "take notes," "close all the other tabs in your browser," and "don't watch the video in bed in case the math is so exciting that you fall asleep." (I tried to inject some humour, including a photo of me seemingly passed out on the couch with my limbs askew, laptop and papers falling everywhere.) We watched this video as a whole class, practicing note-taking as well as the ability to pause and rewind as necessary, then discussed the key points together.

Step 3: have students watch some initial content videos individually in class, to get used to the process.
I brought the cart of notebook computers back. They watched videos I'd prepared on the math topic of the day, asked me any questions they had, then worked on some practice questions on a worksheet.

Step 4: start assigning video-viewing as the new "homework."

Well, that was the theory. In practice, we had a lot of bugs to work out at this point in terms of student access to the blog and self-regulation. But hey, this is a blog about my first steps -- and I was on my way.

The highlight? Hearing one of my grade 9s exclaim aloud, shocked, "Wow, this is actually making sense to me!" An increase in student confidence just by changing the medium? Awesome :).


About the teachers mentioned above:

• Dianne Fitzpatrick is on Twitter as @LadyFitzee; you can read her 21st Century Teaching Blog at http://fitzeehasflippedout.blogspot.ca/.
• You can find Simona Matei on Twitter as @SimonaM1000.
• Ve Anusic is on Twitter as @MathManAnusic; you can find his education blog at https://engagethinking.wordpress.com/.

*[Edited to add: I really should have included a Step Zero in this post, acknowledging the research I did before I started my first experiments with the flip and thanking those who have influenced me along the way. To compensate for this, I have added a new post -- please see it for further acknowledgements of those whose humble sharing has made my own journey possible.]

Welcome to my #flipblog!

This is my blog about the "flipped classroom" -- so what does that mean?

An excellent definition of Flipped Learning has been posted by the Flipped Learning Network here:

Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.

(image source: yuja.com)

In a traditional classroom, students often receive their direct instruction through a lecture given by the teacher in their classroom (the "group learning space"), and they are then given practice work and assignments they are supposed to do at home (the "individual learning space").

In a "flipped" classroom, the "flip" is that the lesson content students used to receive through lecture at school is instead accessed by them in some way at home (or some other "individual learning space," such as the library), and the classroom that used to be used for lecture is now instead used for practice and activities that help the students engage with the material and together deepen their understanding.

In many cases, the direct instruction piece for a flipped class is achieved by having students view and take notes on short "microvideos" on their own time, but this is not the only possible approach -- flipping teachers may also assign readings from a textbook, visits to a course website, or some other means of delivering the content. Whatever the source, viewing and taking notes on the material acts as the students' "homework." It may be accompanied by a couple of practice questions students can use to begin to assess their understanding, but no more; the "hard part" is reserved for the time spent in the "group space," where their teacher is available to provide guidance and answer questions in a more expert (and perhaps less frustrating) way than may be possible if students were to instead get "stuck" on a hard question at home and try to get help from someone there. Moving the direct instruction piece out of the classroom also opens up class time for some of the "dynamic, interactive learning" activities implied in the definition given above -- activities teachers in a traditional classroom bemoan that they have no time for because of the amount of curriculum they need to cover.

Okay, so...what's a #flipblog?

Shortly after I was introduced to the concept of flipping, I learned that one of the best ways to grow in my understanding of how to flip -- and how to flip well -- is to engage with the highly supportive community of teachers around the world who are already flipping their classes. It didn't take me long to realize that this doesn't simply mean passively taking in the experience of others; it also means sharing my own. Sharing my challenges and questions helps me explore solutions with the help of more experienced flippers (a fantastic bunch to begin with), but I have also been humbled to see that sharing my own thoughts is also helpful to others who are also exploring this flipping thing. And so, four years into my flipping journey, here I am, finally feeling ready to blog my experience to the world -- not because I am an expert, by any means, but because as I share, together we grow.

Andrew Swan first posted an introduction to #flipblogs in a post at FlippingAwesomeTeaching:

I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about what the response will be as I share my thoughts here. I also wonder how well I'll keep up with blogging once the school year actually begins. But hey, as we heard over and over in teacher's college, a habit of reflection is a must for any teacher who strives to grow and have an ever-better praxis, so here we go. I'll borrow one more image from Andrew Swan's post:

Time to take some more steps on this journey. Thanks for coming along.