Week 7: Discussion for Educators

Please see review below

After reading the OER and the posts so far this week, I am extremely interested in experimenting with blended learning in my classroom. I thought it would be difficult for me as I am an outreach teacher for gifted/enrichment. I see a new group of students every 1-2 weeks. Most of the students who come to my programs are high achievers and completely engaged during the entire class time. I think I could definitely start creating content that students could access from home as I already focus on a learner centred approach in class.

Option 1: I’m very excited about the ideas behind blended/flipped learning. I really like the idea of having students work through the difficult problems in class where they have the support of their peers and the teacher, instead of struggling at home, even if they have access to an online discussion board. I thought Danielle made a good point about the time commitment. Learning all of the material outside of class would be extremely time consuming. I don’t think that means that blended learning is the wrong approach, but it needs to be thought out carefully. Having students watch/read an hour’s worth of content for each class would be a lot of work to be completing outside school hours. I also agree with Meril that videos can be really boring. A video has to be really engaging or short for me to watch it. If you are going to flip your classroom, not only does your in class content need to be thought out, but the presentation of the “factoids” also need to be engaging.

Reading through the comments below, it is fascinating to learn about people's attempts, successes and frustrations with this model. I am a filmmaker, and not a teacher, but I can offer my experience as a student in flipped situations. I personally usually dislike being required to watch videos, especially when they are not fully engaging, whether that means well-produced or just well articulated. Why not just assign readings? Is video really a better vehicle? Having made many films, I know that video is a process of distillation, that a book that takes many hours to read can be distilled down to 1.5 hours, by simplifying, deleting, and inferring. Video also has the potential to expand and enliven a topic, but this is the art of filmmaking and not likely what a teacher will be doing in their spare time. Even the Khan Academy videos are, in my opinion, dreadful to watch. So, while the idea of a flipped classroom is seductive, and could work in some situations, I'm skeptical. I'm all about higher order thinking and class discussions and problem solving. But I question whether we have to force students to watch videos at home in order to accomplish that.

Option 1: I adore the idea of blended/flipped classrooms for it allows teachers to gain a better idea and understanding of the students' learning. We are no longer simply evaluating them on tests or quizzes that more often than not evaluate their reading skills than anything else. Blended/flipped classrooms also guarantee that each student is given the same opportunity to learn and the same knowledge, as they can work whenever they wish and in whatever environment best suits them. However I must admit that I have run into some very interesting issues when implementing a more blended classroom. Often the time for a student to fully grasp a lesson is greater than the time needed to complete a piece of homework. Also the time required outside of class is in competition with the students’ jobs (I teach grade 10) and extracurricular activities. I also ran into opposition from the parents who wanted less "homework" time and from parents who had a strict screen time limit for their child. In one case, the student, half way through the year, was legally not allowed near a computer with online access (hacker). Blended/flipped classrooms although wonderful did not coincide with everyone’s values, schedule, legal obligations. What happens when your blended learning environment is not an appropriate learning solution for 1-2 students in your class? Our school also wanted to ensure that all students were experiencing the same education, and therefore we were strongly encouraged to conduct the same labs, same quizzes, tests and assignments. This is another fact that must be addressed in blended learning. I adore the advantages of blended learning, and I loved my classroom when it was blended, yet I believe it needs to be fully understood and accepted by all teachers, parents, students and administration before implementation (even if by a few select teachers).

I’m not a teacher, so flipped classrooms don’t have much bearing on my professional life. That said, I work in an online writing lab, and teachers could potentially do more to integrate OWLs into flipped classrooms. Students often access our OWL when they’re at home, in the library, or at school, but I don’t think the OWL is usually integrated into a flipped classroom in a structured way. If a flipped classroom has tablets or computers, a teacher could potentially assign a question that students need to work on in-class, individually or in groups, with synchronous tutors in the OWL. That could mean working on a grammar problem, drafting a paragraph, etc. However, OWLs also have relevance in other subjects, such as when helping develop research strategies for a history essay. Teachers do often demonstrate some of our OWL services live in class, to get their students familiar with what we offer, but using an OWL as part of a classroom activity is much less common. The collaborative nature of OWLs, especially those with synchronous as opposed to asynchronous function, could work well with flipped classrooms.

Hmm.. someone I missed that part of your OER. Will review it. I guess I could do that, but I've already spent a LOT of time making these video lessons. A traditional lesson would require a lesson plan that precedes a live lesson. A flipped lesson would require a lesson plan, recording the lesson outside of class time, producing it, uploading it. Regardless, I still do this but not to the same degree I did 3 or 4 years ago. I remember I started to do this when YouTube allowed me to upload videos in 720P. That made the screencast video really clear. In that time period of 3-4 years I did it, I think I made close to 200 videos.

After reading the OER and the posts so far this week, I am extremely interested in experimenting with blended learning in my classroom. I thought it would be difficult for me as I am an outreach teacher for gifted/enrichment. I see a new group of students every 1-2 weeks. Most of the students who come to my programs are high achievers and completely engaged during the entire class time. I think I could definitely start creating content that students could access from home as I already focus on a learner centred approach in class.

Hi Daniel, Thanks for sharing your experience. I have not attempted blended learning because I was worried about how I would get the students to actually engage in the material. After reading the OER this week, it mentioned that you could incorporate surveys and google forms as an assessment tool. This could possibly help with this problem.

Silver, thank you for bringing up Freshgrade and an example of how blended learning can happen one step at a time. Many teachers are starting off with Freshgrade e-portfolios https://www.freshgrade.com/ as digital repositories for experiences and then working towards using these to play a role in changing assessment practices. Thank you for your insightful comments cbrumwell and Daniel. There is no moving forward without exploring the challenges that arise when attempting to create blended learning environments at different grade levels. Victoria and Laura, thanks for your personal stories about trying flipped/blended in your classes. I really think it is interesting Laura, when you talked about your students not “buying in” to the model. It makes me wonder if all those years of traditional lecture/response format in classes as been ingrained in our students and it will take a bit of time, if not more, to change, but the potential is so exciting as educators!