Flip your Classroom

A growing trend in education is the Flipped Classroom.  When an educator flips their classroom they shift the way students learn the material.  Instead of spending class time lecturing and having students take notes, they give students resources to learn the materials at home.  They assign students, readings, provide them with podcasts to listen to or videos to watch, etc.  Students must come to class prepared.  Class time is spent doing things like discussing materials with peers, answering questions about what they know, and arguing their point.  Professors circulate and help students with information that they do not understand.  To gain a better insight on the flipped classroom read this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education How "Flipping" the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture  


What are your thoughts on Flipping? Please comment.

Time to Glog (No, I did not make a typo.)

You've hear of blogging, but have you hear of Glogging? If you are looking for a different way for students to present information, you may want to have them make a Glog. A Glog is a collage comprised of different types of media (text, images, audio, and video). Once a Glog is created it is given a unique url so that others can view it. The tool for creating Glogs is Glogster, http://www.glogster.com/.  Students are given a page where they place images, audio, video and text.  The media can be uploaded from the computer or linked or embedded directly from the web.  Items places on a Glog can easily be moved around and placed on top of other items to give it a true collage look.  Glogs are a great alternative to PowerPoint presentations.  Have you ever experienced the all too common scenario where students create a PowerPoint loaded with text and read directly from during it their presentations? Glogs eliminate that because there is not room for a lot of text.  Glogs promote the use of visuals.  Look at my sample glog and you will see what I mean.
 Glog: Italian Language and Culture in New York City

My Online Summer

I encourage anyone who is teaching online, has taught online, or is contemplating teaching online to read "My Online Summer" by Jason B. Jones.  In this series of weekly articles written for The Chronicle of Higher Education Jason discusses his progress and what he is learning while teaching his first online course.
My Online Summer

Teach or Learn with your iPhone, iPad, (or iPod touch for that matter).

A few years ago I did a research study on the effectiveness of using iPod touches and instructional Math videos to increase math scores on the New York State 5th grade math assessment.  iPods were given to 5th grade students, who would use them to watch videos on math topics that they were struggling with.  The iPods acted as digital tutors for the students.  Now that my career path has taken me to Higher Education I try to see how iPods, and the newer devices, iPhones, and iPads can be beneficial to college students and professors.  What  is out there far surpasses anything that I was doing with the 5th grade students in my study.  Here is a list of iPhone and iPad apps that can be really beneficial to college students and educators.

iStudiez Pro – (app for students) Students can organize their schedule, plan their homework, arrange assignments and more.

Art – (app for students and professors) displays artwork and information about famous artists

Graphing Calculator (for students and professors) turns iPad into a graphing calculator

Math Ref – (for students) includes math formulas, figures, tips, and examples of the equations and concepts.

iHomework – (for students) students can keep up-to-date with their schoolwork, grades, to-do’s, and teacher information

Speed Anatomy (Quiz) – (students) tests knowledge of anatomy

iTranslate - (students) translates sentences into different languages and reads them back to you in that language

IFlipr Flashcards – (students) Students can create virtual flashcards on their iPad with any content they want.   

Blackboard Mobile - (professors and students) provides access to Blackboard features such as grades, announcements, discussion boards, course blogs, and all your Blackboard course content.

Fourpoint - (students) students can calculate their GPA in a course and it automatically updates as they add grades.

AlwaysOnPC  - (professors and students) access documents from your PC on your iPad.

WritePad – (professors and students) write on the screen and it converts your handwriting into text that can be dropped into documents and other apps

Numbers – (professors and students) a spreadsheet application, allows you to create spreadsheets, charts, tables, and graphs.

Pages – (professors and students) a word processing application

Keynote – (professors and students) a presentation application

iBooks – (professors and students) download books with this app.

Inkling – (professors and students) an eBook app that has unique features such as letting users discuss parts of text by highlighting sections and leaving comments for others to see, and displaying animated images in text.

For more resources read   "The iPad for Professors: Evaluating a Productivity tool After One Year" http://chronicle.com/article/The-iPad-for-Professors-/126885/  from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

If you know of any other apps not listed here or have apps for the Android Operating System, let me know.

Khan Academy: A One Man University Entirely On YouTube

Read this article written by Allison Yin from the Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/article/College-20-A-Self-Appoint/65793/.  It talks about Salman Khan who quit his job as a financial analyst to make educational YouTube videos.  He calls his collection Khan Academy. 

Kahn's videos have hundreds of thousands of views and students rave that he makes learning the topics really easy  According to the article Khan's methods challenge university's beliefs that classes need to be taught in person, for hour long blocks, by qualified educators.  Mr. Khan has a vision of creating a middle and high school where students watch videos and complete self-paced quizzes to certify that they know the information. 

This article states that Khan's idea could change the way public schools are structured.  Do you agree with this? How do you feel about learning coming entirely from videos?  Post your thoughts.

A video Khan created about the phases of meiosis.

Web Site Design for Faculty and Students.

There are many tools out there to create professional websites, (Dreamweaver and Front Page to name a few).  There are also many tools out there to create classroom homepages and wikis, such as PB Works, and Wikispaces.  So far the only tool that I have found to successfully fit the need of both educators and students is Google Sites http://sites.google.com/.  Google Sites is an easy to use tool that provides a lot of options for creating dynamic websites.  Users can select from predesigned templates, such as classroom sites, portfolio sites, and project collaboration sites; or create their own web site from scratch.  Using this tool is as simple as using Microsoft Office tools.  There is a menu where users can add items (images, links, tables), and format objects such as text, and images.  Google Sites also provides the option of embedding videos from YouTube, and adding different apps such as a calendar, the weather, an MP3 player, a discussion board, etc.  Google Sites also has wiki functionality so that multiple people can edit a site.  Everything you create with Google Sites is automatically uploaded to the web once you save it, so you do not have to know anything about transferring files to a server or hosting a site.  Google hosts everything for you.

Here is an example of how to use Google Sites to create a course site: http://sites.google.com/site/csc170/

Here is a example of an electronic portfolio created with Google Sites: http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/

As a bonus, Google Sites has many templates to use in your personal life, such as family sites, wedding sites, and sites for groups and organizations. 
 

The Twitter Experiment - UT Dallas

Speaking of Classroom Response, check out this video of Dr. Monica Rankin from the University of Texas at Dallas.  Dr. Rankin shows how she uses Twitter for student participation and response during lectures.

Inspired by this experiment, a professor from STJ and I have looked into how Twitter can be use for responding to student's questions.  Professors can come up with keywords for each week of the course.  Students can tweet their questions categorizing them into topics by using the hashtag symbol and the keyword for that week.  The professor can then bring up the questions at certain times during the lecture and answer them.