10 Free Tools for your #Flipclass Videos

"We're making a video tomorrow, and I don't even know what we're using to do it, or where we're saving it, or what we're doing after we save it..."

We had the honor of hosting +Jon Bergmann in our district last week, so my colleague is really motivated to begin flipping her classroom, but she's feeling overwhelmed to say the least. So where can she begin?

The Basics: No Frills Approach to Jumping In

• Shoot video of you and/or a co-teacher in front of a whiteboard with a digital camera, webcam (we have really handy iPEVOs in our district), smartphone or tablet. Upload video to YouTube. Link to that video on your class website, email students the link, or send them to the url for your YouTube channel
• Features: 
• Easy to implement
• tools probably already at hand
• Cons: 
• Hope you get it in the first take! :) If you're not going to edit, you'll have to rehearse once or twice to hone your timing and scripting.
• Sound quality dependent upon built-in microphone

• Take a screencast of your SMARTboard using the SMART recorder. This "SMART tool" is included with the install of SMART Notebook on your Windows or Mac machine.
• Features: 
• Because its a screencast, you can focus on what you say rather than how you look
• Your students are probably already comfortable with the look of the video
• Pause button is always on top, so you can pause to change colors, insert images, etc., without adding to the length of your video
• Cons
• Some students may miss the personal connection of seeing your face and inflection unless you pair with a webcam in the recording area
• Similar to shooting with your smartphone or tablet, you'll need to rehearse or end up spending a lot of time editing (which you probably don't want to/know how to do, which is why you're using SMART recorder)

• Screencast-o-matic: This is my go-to screencast utility. You can use it as a web app or native application. 
• Features:
• All of those listed above for SMART Recorder
• Can layer recording window on top of Notebook, but also over a web browser, PowerPoint, or content-specific software for demonstrations. We have a teacher in our department who loves using Geometer Sketchpad that could really take advantage this point
• Multiple save options. Save directly to YouTube, Screencast-o-matic, or just to your file on your machine
• Can scale recording window however you like, hiding other applications you have running without closing them down.
• Clip, trim, and review clips before saving or continuing

Free iOS Apps:

• ShowMe - easy to use screencast whiteboard, import images, search library of other teacher's videos 
• Educreations - easy to use screencast whiteboard, import images, search library of other teacher's videos
• Touchcast - Can be used as a screencast whiteboard, a camera of you in front of a whiteboard, or you picture-in-picture in front of website/image
• Ask3 - easy to use screencast whiteboard, import images, classroom community and message board built in. "Ask3" is derived from the strategy "ask three, then me," so the app is designed around students collaborating and answering each other's questions from your video.
• Vittle Free - import photos, limited to a minute recording in this free version

Other Free Websites and Software with Extra Features

• Present.Me
• Features:
• Easy to set-up
• Video of you along-side slides or of you alone
• Trim/clip/review recording if you make a mistake
• Link to your Google+ account
• Cons:
• Requires flash, so not an option on iOS 
• Jing (from the creators of Camtasia Studio)
• Features:
• Available as a native app, so it will be available even when WiFi is not
• Videos stored at screencast.com
• Restart a recording if you make a mistake
• Pair with webcam to shoot yourself, too

Use a tablet to annotate on whiteboard software, or just present alongside a slideshow

Summary

Try out several tools. Find the right combination between polish and ease of use. Give yourself permission to grow in your skills presenting and editing. 

You're more likely to persevere through hiccups of your implementation of the flipped classroom if you'll allow yourself to fail every once in awhile. (So that you know what to improve upon.)

Jeff Bliss, Luddites, and Graduation Credits

Just happened upon this editorial from Trinidad and Tobago (you know, that country with the TieDye hockey sweaters in D2: The Mighty Ducks) calling for a new Luddite movement, and I'm not quick to disagree.

Wait, what? 

What's wrong?

This is a math and EDTECH blog. Why are you trying to champion the Luddites?

Do you KNOW about the Luddites, or do you only use the word synonymously for tech haters that make your job training and collaborating more difficult (depressing?)

Luddites were about quality. Is it in your life? Is it in your classroom?

All the championing of teacher-teller-offer Jeff Bliss this week has been largely about his passionate plea for impassioned teaching. I get it. The kids our one-size-fits most educational system hurts most are the ones who burned out once, realize they really want it for themselves, and then remember the whole reason they left in the first place. Sometimes school sucks.

Enter the machines to save the day! Flipped class! Online courses! Blogging! Differentiated objectives!

These are great strategies to turn the industrial system on its head - in the right hands. Online courses are wonderful for students who cannot participate in the time or space of the local traditional school. I love how the flipped class gives more time for peer discussion and productive struggle. Mastery systems that deliver differentiated objectives for individual students and groups lead students in goal setting, self pacing, and reward students who want to work ahead without punishing those that need more time.

None of these matter, however, if teachers and admin just go through the motions, gaming the new systems, getting kids through their new technology-enriched courses while patting themselves on the back with the credits they're rewarding. The teenager in front of you is more than willing to get his credits (that word has me thinking about arcade tokens, which is all I feel like they're worth sometimes) from "passing" that course. Are you REALLY helping them? I'm not sure.

Does Jeff Bliss just want to get through high school? I'm sure he wouldn't hate it, but is that what he deserves? Jeff Bliss wants to star on the movie about his life where he made the choice to return to school and in return found teachers who shared an kind of passion with him.

I don't think Jeff Bliss wants his math teacher to be his best friend, but I do think he wants to know his math teacher isn't counting down the minutes until he's out the door. It doesn't matter how shiny and differentiated our systems are if the teachers (even in online courses) are bland robots going through the motions.

Technology is great, but remember, you're also a craftsman.

"When Will We Use This?" - Can STUDENTS Find The Answer?

I have a notion that math teachers get this question more than anyone else. I don't notice a cultural aversion to reading and writing (and even science) that I feel toward math.

I want to answer that question, but more often than not, I just don't have an answer for things like adding rational expressions with polynomials in the numerator and denominator (if YOU do, please share.) I feel like our textbook writers would even say the same - our rational equation and radical equation chapters are a little sparse on the practical application.

I think a lot of the reason this is a difficult question for a high school math teacher is two-fold:

• Many of the things Algebra curriculum still has students doing by hand is done by computer or technology in the "real-world."
• Application of order of operations and other basic algebra and arithmetic principles have a wide variety of low-level fruit to pluck; the higher we go in math the more specialized the application (for good reason)

Unless I've worked in 6 different applied science fields before moving to education, my exposure to "real" applications will be limited to problems posed in college or that I've encountered in our textbooks. 

The irony of the solution to this problem, is that I think we can direct our own experiences to help students answer this question. 

Consider this column from NYT writer Thomas L Friedman about innovation. (Need a Job? Invent It)

Anytime we learn something new in grad classes, at professional development, or via our PLN on blogs or social media, we must decide, "How will we use this?" The answer may be easily implemented into current practice, adapted to current practice, or we may have to invent a use.

Friedman reflects on our past employment behaviors and current employment realities with Harvard Education specialist, +Tony Wagner, and I think the same adaptability we're having to apply ourselves to job searches is what we can use to train innovation in our students. 

"My generation had it easy. We got to “find” a job. But, more than ever, our kids will have to “invent” a job. (Fortunately, in today’s world, that’s easier and cheaper than ever before.) Sure, the lucky ones will find their first job, but, given the pace of change today, even they will have to reinvent, re-engineer and reimagine that job much more often than their parents if they want to advance in it."   -Tom Friedman

I'm fixated on the last sentence above. "reinvent, re-engineer, and reimagine that job..." Isn't that what we do with tools and techniques in our classroom? Let's model that!

How do we model that innovation/application/reinvention to our students for math? Here are my ideas:

1. Utilize reverse instruction ("flipping the class") so you can use class time to mentor their investigation and exploration.

2. Stop trying to answer the "when will we use this?" question. "I don't know," is an acceptable answer, and if you take the shame out of it, hopefully you and your students can use it as a door for exploration.

3. Don't be afraid to "mess up" when modeling story problem solutions to the class. (Do it on purpose) Its bad practice to "wing it," but you can recreate the process you went through in finding a solution, and share what things you did wrong before you were "right."

4. We know it will take time; that's probably a reason we avoid these kinds of self-exploration for our students. Be okay with that, plan ahead, and give it time. If we introduce the chapter theme and exploration at the beginning of the unit, and stage checkpoints along the way, students will usually have weeks to discover an application for themselves.

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What do you think? Is it doable? How do YOU answer this question? Comment below, tweet, and share!

More Reflection on the Flipped Classroom

Found an infographic today about the Flipped Classroom (or reverse instruction). I thought a lot through it last year in this post, and still wish I could make it a reality for my own classroom. Last year one of my problems was inequity among my students of internet access at home, which I'm perceiving is less of an issue this year. But, with three preps this year I feel like the load of online lecture creation is too heavy to really make it happen.

I have had a measure of success this year with Edmodo.com getting my kids logged on to ask me questions, share resources, and complete some assignments. The kids have gravitated to it much more than I expected. It largely replicates what I share on my class facebook page, so I thought kids would use that primarily to avoid having another website to login to, but perhaps the fact that its NOT facebook is the appeal.

Here's the infographic - check out the failure rate decreases cited toward the bottom.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Flipping the Classroom (Week 1)

(or,  to YouTube, or not to YouTube...  That is the question.)

The first thing I learned this week  is that that is probably a correlation between the quality and clarity of the materials I create/share online for my students and their likelihood of having those materials prepared when they get to class.

That brings me to the trouble of time. It seems ideal to create my own videos so I can control the content, elude to events from class, and point students to more resources, but to create a worthwhile video takes me at least an hour at this point after I am done filming/screencasting, editing, and uploading.  Creating my own content also makes burning to DVDs or CDs much easier, which is important for making a flipped classroom feasible for my students without web access.  This almost seems manageable for one course, but getting it done for two courses at the same time, right now, seems daunting.  My first solution is to compile playlists of the best videos, which is mostly what I did for last week.  When chosen thoughtfully, I think a playlist of others' videos is almost as good, and kind of has me feeling like I have a co-teacher.

But here's the dilemma.  Many students that don't have web access at home make the wise choice to use their lunch or other free time in the building to go to a lab and view course materials and check their online grades when they can.  My students could have viewed their notes from last week this way IF YouTube was not blocked for student accounts.  The advantage of YouTube is critical mass of content.  When a student views one of my videos or one I share, if he wants to see a different video, the largest library of related content is on YouTube.  There is related content on unblocked sites like Vimeo or TeacherTube, but just not as much.  Something I need to work out.

Assessment of Week 1:
We were off Monday for MLK Day as mentioned in the last post, and then had snow days on Thursday and Friday, so there's really not even enough experience to grade.  Informal early reports suggest that my older students were more likely to have accessed the content from home.
Things to Change for Week 2:
Not a whole lot to adjust yet because half of my content/lesson plan from last week is still on the table.  I did not call/email parents to let them know notes/videos were available, which I know should be one element of success, but that was partially because I was not totally pleased with what I was offering last week.  I already had an email attachment debacle a couple weeks ago during a snow day, so I did not want to lose some parents by pushing crap out to the masses.  However, I will...

• email/call parents
• focus on ONE of my courses to improve quality of content
• put some videos on Vimeo (can those uploads be linked to YouTube?)

Flipping My Classroom (Initial Thoughts)

Tomorrow's the big day!  Sort of.

As with when I jumped into trying to implement standards-based grading with little more than a day's preparation last January, tomorrow I begin my week-long pilot of flipping, reverse, backwards classroom.  I really like the idea of it, and watching videos here and here, and following @drezac was pretty motivating and they seem to make it work, but I know that I am going to run into some difficulties.  If I could, BRIEFLY, go through the ADDIE model to digest what lay before me, I will.

Analyze
What initially turned me on to the idea of "flipping" my classroom is that I felt like I was spending a lot of time covering examples and giving notes that my kids needed, but was severely lacking in helping my kids and coaching them along.  I built a "co-teacher" standard into my evaluations this semester to encourage the spirit some kids will inevitably foster of helping their peers and doubling my efforts, but I want to do more.  "The Rage" as we like to call it at North most often comes out toward me when the kids are just frustrated.  I hope to increase my one-on-one time with students and small groups of students.


Design/Develop
On Friday I gave all of my classes the heads up on my intentions for this week and informally polled the class on who did not have internet or a smartphone to potentially watch videos and only ran into a few that (admitted) to having a problem with those capabilities.  I actually expected for more of those situations from my experience last year, so I'd been racking my brain, colleagues, and PLN trying to come up with alternatives to online videos.  I KNOW that most everyone has a DVD player at home, so ideally for those students without internet I would burn DVDs for, and secondarily would put the files on a CD/DVD-ROM for kids to open the files on an offline computer.

Last week we had a snow day and I emailed all my parents and students about a video I had posted and I got at least 1/4 participation, so I'm optimistic about levels of participation at home and support from parents.


Implement
I started making my own videos for my two courses today.  The advantage to making my own is that I can make for certain that everything on there is concise and tailored to where I'm going, and also makes the content easily transferable to DVD.  The disadvantage, obviously, is that it takes a LOT more time than using someone else's video.  Another limitation for me at home is that in order to get clean audio, I need to either be away from my 1 yr old or she needs to be sleeping.  That was not an option for me today, so uploading my own to YouTube was awash.

The new challenge, for me then, is how will I get notes and instruction to my offline kids without having my own content to push to them?  For those that are online, I ended up making two playlists on YouTube for their respective subjects for the week and embedded the playlists on Edline, our district website server.


Evaluate
I'm a little disappointed about not exactly coming out on top of things on the preparation side, but that's more acceptable when adopting innovations for one class versus an entire organization.  There are fewer consequences to adoption on smaller scales.  I was pleased with coaching my students last week, and am pleased with my lesson plan for tomorrow to get things rolling.

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I wonder what the other math teachers will think...  I DID get an endorsement from @aunthattie on my DVD burning idea.