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