Homework, Technology & FLIPPED Classrooms… Thinking outside the box

“Technology drives almost every facet of our lives today.” Just the other day I was driving home from work thinking about this concept only to notice that there were digital screens with rotating and moving advertisements showing at prominent intersections, I knew they were there yes, but i had never given any real thought to the societal change behind them. Stopping for fuel a screen above the bowser kicked into life as I drew the pump from the bowser. Facebook, Netflix, smart phones, iPads and tablets; the list goes on and on. Society and people are now craving technology, and in particular video. They are yearning for it

Education is no different, television screens and projects making regular appearance in the modern classroom. 1 to 1 netbook or iPad programs in schools, kids using their phones for so much more than just making a call. Teachers and schools running Facebook and Twitter accounts, websites and Learning Management Systems to enhance the student learning; technology is carving itself as the cornerstone of not only elements of our daily lives but also the ways in which we teach our kids. This isn’t a bad thing, not by any stretch of the imagination. Teachers are using technology to extend the learning for the students in the classroom, enhancing the ways in which students can share and present their knowledge to the class and the community and giving students the skills and tools to draw on a wider level of knowledge than they can receive from those around them. Technology is driving our society to grow and evolve into smarter and more creative people. We can, as a teaching profession however, use this technology in a deeper and more meaningful way to continue the growth and development of our students, especially with regard to homework.

Homework is a sore topic for many people. Some argue that students shouldn’t be given homework, others want more. Some say that students are given too much work to do outside of the classroom which is impacting on them as growing children and teenagers. Teachers are forced to set copious amounts of homework to satisfy school requirements, societal expectations or to keep up with generally thick curriculum that they struggle to match in the limited time they see their kids. Whatever stand you take, homework is a learning tool that we need to look at as teachers, to pull apart the purposes behind it and explore how we can use technology to enhance what we are setting and trying to achieve with the learning we are sharing.

Currently, in many situations, homework is a summative task. A worksheet, chapter questions, problems or other tasks that need solving to support the learning that has happened in the classroom. To solidify what the students have been learning at school. While there is a place for this type of task, I would argue that homework could be so much more.

Many of you may have heard of the FLIPPED classroom idea. For those of you who haven’t, it is a concept where students are given resources to consume outside of the class BEFORE the learning occurs with the teacher. They are to complete set preliminary learning tasks outside of the classroom to progress what happens inside it. Now some of you reading this may have experienced FLIPPED classrooms before, others may have even run a FLIPPED classroom session of their own, but it is this concept that I want to use as the catalyst for developing and growing what we are setting for homework to make the learning more effective and the tasks that we create with our students more valuable and viable.

Many teachers use technology, like Slide Decks (PowerPoint or Keynote) presentations in their teaching to tie information together in a module or unit of work. It’s a great use of technology to ensure that students link text, images, film, audio and other resources together in the classroom, however I want to pose a suggestion to you all as to how you can turn these presentations into FLIPPED tasks to make homework and the class time more effective. I propose that those of you who use slide decks in your classroom turn those into videos and set those videos as homework tasks for students to complete BEFORE they come into the class to start a topic. Make those slide decks a learning resource that students can consume outside of the classroom and when students come into the classroom use that time to facilitate their use, application and exploration of that knowledge through learning tasks and activities. By no means am I suggesting that all the teaching should occur this way, as traditional instruction is a vital and important part of a students cognitive growth, I am however suggesting that if you set some form of technological learning that can be consumed by the student before they come to the lesson, teaching time can be better utilised for application of that knowledge in a monitored and controlled environment. Too many times teachers run their lessons the other way around. They teach the content in the time slots allocated in the day and then they set work for he kids to complete at home which applies that knowledge, in an environment where for many kids there is a lack of focused guidance and monitoring. However if we set homework tasks that had the students consuming the learning at home, then when they sit behind their desks in our classrooms we apply and develop that knowledge through practical application in an environment where the student is supported and guided by professionals, the learning will surely be more effective and powerful. We need to use technology, particularly video to drive our homework tasks by flipping the learning, especially as it is taking over as a dominant part of everyday life, as I pointed out earlier.

So how can we do this? How can we use technology and specifically video to achieve an effective FLIPPED classroom homework task?

Well there are fantastic applications out there that can allow you to easily create films without any special or fancy equipment. Screen casting or Screen Recording is a fantastic and easy way to create FLIPPED classroom activities, especially if you already have your slide deck presentations from your classroom delivery ready to go.

For Mac users QuickTime is the easiest and best tool to use for this. For PC users, there are a variety of different tools available but one that I find user friendly and free to download and use is Free Screen Video Recorder by DVDVideoSoft. Both of these applications allow you to record the movements that you make on your screen while capturing your voice as you speak and annotate what you are doing (this is the way many people on YouTube create those “how to” guides for various programs). Using these applications, set the program to record your screen and then just run your slide deck presentation like you would in your classroom, forgetting that you have the screen recorder running. Talk through the presentation, discuss points that are interesting, add anecdotes and stories that you would if you were teaching the lesson to a room full of children, play audio, link to videos; run your class whilst sitting behind your computer at your desk on your couch in the living room. These programs will capture not only your voice, but every movement that you make on your screen; as you move from slide to slide, if you highlight some interesting text on a slide deck, if you navigate to and open a website or a video, it will capture it all. Once you are done, you have created a digital copy of your lesson that is complete with video and audio material. Save the file and publish it to your class and get them to watch the lesson at home as homework. Then when they come into the class for the next session start of with questions that they have from the learning. Straight away the lesson is drawing on information and learning that they are bringing into the room and students are beginning to form stronger understandings of what they have consumed. From there, in the safety of the classroom environment, you can either delve deeper into some of the concepts covered in the homework session or you can launch yourself and your students off into a learning task that will have them applying what they have learnt and further extending and developing their knowledge. The implications will be astounding, the atmosphere will be electric and the classroom environment will be a buzzing and thriving place to be.

Of course you don’t have to stop there. You can get students consuming all kinds of learning through technology as homework tasks. Podcasts, websites, educational games, streamed television shows and documentaries can all play a part – this concept of screen casting is just one idea that can help to get you started on using technology to explore FLIPPED classrooms. Try it, I think you will be surprised with the outcomes.

Tips & Tricks:

My first tip for FLIPPED tasks like this is that you need to be really weary of the length of the video that you put for homework. Try to avoid long 45 minute sessions as we all know that they can become boring and distractions will occur. If students are required to download material of this size there may be bandwidth or connection issues at their homes, so the smaller the video the better. Make your videos short and sharp. In my classroom I use this technique regularly and I am able to get students engaged and interested in homework tasks with 15 minute videos. If your topic requires longer then break it up into smaller sections, and use each section as a different homework task.

My second tip is that you don’t saturate your teaching with FLIPPED tasks. While they are fantastic learning practices, doing all your learning in this fashion can become tedious and predictable. I like to mix my pedagogical approaches up to keep the learning environment interesting and engaging. For tasks where a FLIPPED process is appropriate, I use it, but I also mix it up with other teaching approaches like traditional instruction sessions as well as interpersonal (working with others) and intrapersonal (working on their own) tasks.

FLIPPED classrooms are fantastic, and it is only through coupling this with technology that we are going to create vibrant and exciting learning environments for our kids that extend outside of the walls of the classroom. Try to avoid setting the obligatory “read this article or chapter before you come into class” task and use technology to think outside of the box. Maybe get students to watch a screen cast, listen to a podcast, play an online educational game, watch an episode of a show or documentary or explore a website and then use that as the tool to engage rich learning in the walls of the classroom.