Blog 9: Should America Switch to a "Flipped Classroom" Paradigm?

Welcome back, everybody! Enjoy the last few weeks of class because after this semester, we're all going to have to endure the burden of what will feel like an everlasting summer. I hope you all survive it. Onto the actual topic, I heard an interesting term thrown last week: "the Flipped Classroom". The Flipped Classroom concept pertains to the idea that students should do most of their learning at home and come into class ready to work on exercises allocated for the lesson of the week. I have mixed opinions about this learning technique. On one hand, I think the structure we have now works fine. Students receive the material together in a comfortable space, and teachers are able to help one-on-one whenever possible. Then, their skills are tested at home, on their own. The Flipped Classroom aspect in a K-12 setting would not work as well, since I feel most students would fail to actually try to learn the material, which means they'd show up to class unprepared, and would probably result in the teacher reteaching the entire lesson anyway. On the other hand, this is pretty much how I do most of my own learning as a young adult. I have an internship where all I do is edit videos, so when I have free time, I look up some tutorial videos or take some short classes (free classes, of course) to expand my skills. I, then, show up and try what I learned and adjust according to the feedback received. It works for me, but because I want to do the learning myself for my own professional development. Kids in the K-12 don't care about professional growth, yet, therefore I feel it is necessary to have an educator with them throughout their learning, and provide them with a requirement of one online class for graduation in order to get them accustomed to future learning experiences.

The Flipped Classroom concept may be a little wishy-washy, but something I can definitely get behind is OERs. Open Educational Resources (OER) are typically online resources that are available to most people free of charge! No, this is not an ad for OERs, but it may feel like it in a minute! The reason why I believe OERs are fantastic, aside from the fact that they are free of charge, is because they are provided through a network that is available to a massive amount of people ready to improve their personal and professional development. Of course, there's the whole issue pertaining to the Digital Divide, and as educators we should all advance to a society where that divide is diminished exponentially as the years go by, but I believe this to be a great first step in general. To give a well deserved shout out to one of these OERs, and probably my favorite (still not an ad), I bring you Quizlet! I am assuming that most of my peers have dabbled with this before, and if you haven't... why? Quizlet is a website where students are able to create previously used studying techniques (like flashcards and matching) and keep them centralized in one area for others to use as well. Most of the pages are created by students, in which they enter the information Cornell notes style, and then the website is bale to use those notes and create quizzes, flashcards, matching, etc. An example of this would be a student enrolled in an American history class creating a quizlet for their terms and definitions pertaining to their lesson at hand, which they would then use to study for a quiz or an exam. Once created, other students looking for a quizlet with these terms can search it and study from it as well. I will provide some links to the website, an example, and 5 tips on how to use Quizlet below.

On a different subject, I have slowly but surely realized that PowerPoint is my least favorite of the Microsoft Office softwares. It's not a bad software at all, but when it comes down to it, PowerPoint has always been a program that I needed to use rather than wanting to use it. For example, I use Word all the time in school and in my professional life, but I also use it in my free time to write stories and such. Excel is fantastic for managing my financials and alerting me when I have gone complete overboard at Chik Fil A. PowerPoint... is there for school. I did complete two new projects on the program recently, and I did learn some new useful skills for the future, which is never something to complain about. Both assignments had their fun to them. The first one was a PowerPoint presentation and slideshow that allowed me to create a lesson on basic editing for media students. Looking back at it, I wish I had made the line strokes during the recording of the slideshow rather than on the actual project, which would've made it easier for the students to understand. I think the other project had more fun to it, since it included adapting a children's story. The second assignment was meant to be more interactive, completely taking away the linear aspect of the project. I never knew that this was a feature on PowerPoint, not that I was looking either, but I am very glad I know I can use this in the future! Looking back at my second assignment, the only thing I wish I had was more time. I liked the end result, but if I had had a little more time planning (which was my fault for not making the time), I think the creativity as well as the design would've been off the charts. I'll provide some screenshots of both projects and you guys can let me know what you think!

That's all I have for you this week, till next time!

-The Tank

Quizlet

Quizlet Example - American History terms

5 Tips Using Quizlet

First and second PowerPoints assignments, respectively.