Flipping my classroom

I recently bought a book called Flip Your Classroom. It is a great, short book about the reasons for flipping your classroom and how to go about it. Flipping your classroom is basically having students learn concepts at home (using videos made by teachers) and then using class time to master the concepts with the teacher acting as a mentor and guide during the mastery time.

  

I highly recommend the book.  The authors recommend using Camtasia to record your videos.  I have been using Jing (TechSmith) for years and Camtasia is a more sophisticated program by the same people.  I am currently using the free trial but I love it and will be purchasing it when I buy my new laptop in a few weeks (my last laptop was stolen from school and it turns out that neither the school's insurance nor ours will cover the loss - so sad).

If you are not ready to pay for a program, Jing is free and does a great job at recording your audio and recording your screen. You only have 5 minutes in the free version but you can get a lot done in 5 minutes of screencasting.  I love it but I am ready for something more.

My slideshare views

I just got an email from SlideShare. It is the site where I host some of the presentations I have made for my classes, both face to face and online. It allows you to add your own narration to a presentation so students can listen to your voice while they watch the slides. I guess it was my first foray into flipping my classroom. Well, check out how many times they have been viewed since I posted my first presentation a few years ago: Wow! That seems like a lot. 20956 views! The excess exclamation marks aside, the number of views show that the videos/slideshows are worth doing. Luckily, I am involved with a Tools2Go PLC initiative at my Board (thanks, Len). Tools2Go is our WECDSB Google + partition (is that how to describe it?). One of the things we can do is have students get a Youtube account under the umbrella of our Board. Also, I now have a Youtube channel and I am excited to make more videos using Youtube. Maybe 5 years from now, I will also have 20,000 views there.

Sidewalk scribe

This year, for Catholic Education Week, my English department did an activity called "Sidewalk Scribe".  I got the idea from Soul Pancake. We bought a bunch of sidewalk chalk and took the students outside to write quotations that inspire them on the sidewalk around the school.  It was great fun.

When I left, I saw students stopping to read what was written on the sidewalks.  I also saw a grandmother get out of her car and read some while she waited for her grand kids after school.

Here are some pictures:

Kid President and Soul Pancake

One of my students last semester recommended a Youtube video by Kid President.  I loved it and through the video, learned about Soul Pancake.  I bought the Soul Pancake book and it had a lot of great and quirky ideas in it.

This is the video that started it all:

New header design

The new look is thanks to my husband!  I love it.

A student favourite

My students are loving anything written by John Green.  A few students last semester choose John Green novels for their Literature Circles.  We now have a teacher doing The Fault in Our Stars with her classes, both University and College level.  The book is so popular, that students are borrowing it to let their parents, siblings and friends read it as well.  Said teacher also has an "author crush" on Green which inspired me to create a Pinterest board in her honour.

A friend and DI consultant at our Board recommended it to me last year and I loved it as well.  It is sad and truthful and clever and inspirational. 

I also did a little Fault inspired manicure, just for fun:

A new TLLP grant

My teaching partner in crime, Daniella, and I applied for another Teacher Learning and Leadership Program Grant for the 2013-2014 school year and our project was accepted.  Our project is called "Comics Aren't Just For Kids: Graphic Texts in the High School Classroom".  We are going to develop lessons and assessments centered around graphic texts, both paper and digital. 

The project is in its infancy but we are attending the kick off conference in May and are already looking at what graphic texts we will use.  I have a number of volunteers from my first semester Studies in Literature class who are helping us choose our texts.  They are called the "Dork Knights" (a hilarious play on the Holy Names Knights, the Dark Knight and our own "dorkiness").  Daniella is less dorky so I hope she will lend some much needed legitimacy to the project. We are also hoping to get a local comic book store involved.

One of the really exciting aspects of the project is the purchase of 25 iPad Mini's to use.  The TLLP team at the Ministry of Education suggested I look into the work of Dr. Ruben Puentedura and his SAMR model.  The SAMR model talks about the use of technology in the classroom.  I am looking forward to exploring his ideas and using technology as a way to redefine both our instruction through this project and also redefine our assessment and evaluation of the project using the iPads.

I have started to collect ideas for the technology aspect of the project on my TLLP Pinterest Page.

So, apply for a grant.  We have gotten 2 in the last 3 years and our first project, Equal is Not the Same: DI & the Middle Learner was a great learning experience. It is true that Teacher-Directed Professional Development is the way to go.

We will be using both a website and a blog to document our progress.