Final(ish) FlipCon12 thoughts

Now that I’ve had about a week and a half to percolate the ideas from FlipCon12, it seems like a good time to get some final thoughts out about the conference. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the quantity of really smart people and the quality of pedagogical discussion that was present throughout the conference was, in a word, exhilarating. I came away from the conference, which was only two weeks after I ended my school year, incredibly energized for August to roll around. Usually the energized feeling happens sometime in July on my mountain bike way up in the Rockies in Colorado, but it came early this year.

So the final(ish) thoughts? First, the #flipclass community is so positive and supportive. The number of people who are willing to talk, help, and discuss ideas at a moment’s notice is pretty incredible. Second is assessment: Jen Gray’s and Marc Seigel’s sessions really challenged me to think about what, why, and how I assess in my class; there will be more on this later for sure. Third, it was great to connect with some fellow history flippers – there aren’t a lot of us, and it was nice to build a support network of folks who will be doing similar things in the fall. Finally, I went to FlipCon12 with the idea that next year I would be doing what is termed as Flipping 101 – move direct instruction to out of the classroom to video and run a normal classroom with more time in class to discuss the big ideas in a unit as well as current events relevant to a given unit. Well, all that goes out the window. I’d love to say there was an ‘ah-ha’ moment, or a great session that pushed me to make this choice, but it was a cumulative effect of the conference: I can’t do Flipping 101 next year. I’m all in – my world history class will be a self-paced mastery class next year. And I’m so excited to start!

I’ve titled this a final(ish) set of takeaways from FlipCon12 because the ideas are still going to get banged around in my head. I haven’t had a chance yet to go back and watch the FlipCon12 sessions I was unable to attend. I will continue to blog about my thoughts for my class next year and hopefully get some helpful feedback from the #flipclass community. The journey – with a healthy kick from FlipCon12 – has barely begun.

#FlipCon12, Day 2: Leaving Motivated and Energized

So any sort of huge reflective piece out of #FlipCon12 is an absolute impossibility at the moment. A couple pieces will come as I have more time to digest what happened these last three days in Chicago. To ruin any chance of a surprise coming out of any of those posts, I’ll let you in on a little secret: a whole lot of awesomeness happened. I’m going to focus on my immediate experiences and reflections today at #FlipCon12. Assessment was the theme today for me – Jen Gray and Marc Seigel led great sessions about what assessment can (and should?) look like in a flipped classroom. Also, a second consecutive working lunch, with history flippers this time, happened. Networking – love it!

My view of Bergmann/Sams keynote

One aspect of today that I’m not going to write about is Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann’s keynote – I have a feeling this post will run a little long on assessment as it is, and there was just so much in their keynote. All I’ll say about it is once it goes up online, watch it – it is really an incredible speech. I love the cutting board analogy!

I started today hanging out with Jen Gray. I loved some of the organizational and metacognitive strategies she shared. The charts she uses in her classroom include learning targets – in student friendly language – and show multiple ways student could show proficiency in a certain learning target. Additionally, these charts also included columns that had a suggested completion date for this learning target, as well as a place for the actual completion date. Her daily goals sheet – what do you want to accomplish today and what did you accomplish today – are great accountability pieces for students as well. Both sound so simple, right? I love stealing things like this from smart people! Saves me from having to do the thinking later…

Jen also emphasized metacognition around tests for students. She pushed the idea of creating a place on tests for students to say whether they are confident or unsure of the answer they gave on a test question before they turn the test in to be graded: yup, love it. I also really like the test corrections structure in her class: test corrections earn you the ability to be able to retake a test. I am moving to written short answer questions, which students will receive at the beginning of a unit, as the majority of each summative unit assessment next year (with a couple multiple choice questions sprinkled in – darn state test prep). I am hopeful that I can do a few tweaks to her idea (which included classifying why you got a question wrong – simple mistake, wording of the question, just didn’t know it), like maybe test corrections on the multiple choice section of the test earning you a verbal retake of the short answer questions.  In addition to conventional test corrections of errors, Jen also has her students reflect on what helped them master content they got correct – whether students mastered the content because they taught a friend/family member, made a flow chart/concept map, rewatched a video, or an in-class assignment for example. 

After my history flippers lunch and Aaron and Jon slaying their keynote, Marc Seigel finished up my #FlipCon12 experience. His early words about our classrooms being vehicles for critical thinking, not content regurgitators immediately struck a chord with me, for this is how I view my history classroom. Marc also asked us to think about what we would name our class based on how we assign grades in our class – should your class be called ‘history test taking’ or ‘history writing and research’? He also encouraged us to consider if our assessments allowed for creativity and/or choice, and pushed us to consider problem- or inquiry-based assessments. Clearly, lots of great things to ponder.

But, in my mind, Marc’s most important message dealt with the intersection of assessments and learning standards: in any classroom, but particularly in a flipped classroom, we must design our assessments around learning standards and be sure not to force already existing assessments onto learning standards. Coming on the heels of Aaron Sams’ question on the end of his keynote asking us what we would do with all our classtime in a flipped classroom, Marc’s point about learning standards being the basis for assessments and not vice versa is an extremely important one for me to look at this summer as I give assessment in my classroom a serious rethink.

Keynote stylized in Snapseed

In summary, wow. I can’t believe the face-to-face part of #FlipCon12 is over – what a spectacular experience. So much thinking (and collaborating) to do!

#FlipCon12, Day 1: Drinking from the Firehose

Sorry for the cliché, but that is where my head is at right now, 3 hours after the end of the sessions on Day 1 at #FlipCon12. I got a chance to listen to and network with a hugely talented and dedicated group of people today, and I’m just trying to make sure it all sticks in my brain. Some highlights:

Brian Bennett’s points in his opening keynote were great – the challenge to have teachers radically reconceptualize how they use classtime was a good one to hear. Despite the common misconception, a flipped classroom is not about the videos! His push to have teachers be clear with their students about their expectations and flexible with how students use classtime was well received. Oh, asynchoronous classrooms. When will I have the guts to go there in my classroom?

Troy Cockrum's session

Troy Cockrum’s session on writing workshops in a flipped classroom was a great one – after spending so much time around math and science teachers (no offense – y’all are great, and heavily numerically dominant at #FlipCon12), it was great to hear from a Humanities flipper. Troy emphasized using the Explore-Flip-Apply framework, championed by Ramsey Musallam, for flipping writing instruction. I’ve got a good idea of how I want to use this framework to teach content in my classroom, but even after today I’m still trying to figure out what this looks like in terms of teaching skills, particularly writing, in my world history class. I’m looking forward to mulling it over, but also getting to talk to Ramsey about it in August at CUE Rockstar.

Google master Andy Schwen

Andy Schwen absolutely blew my mind with the work he has done with scripts in Google docs and how he leverages free tools from Google to run his flipped math classes. I need some serious time to go back over and digest some it. Check it out here.

Working lunch on standards based grading – very stimulating to get to pick the brains of smart folks over lunch. I’d love to go completely to standards based grading, but I think I need to get my flip down next year before making that plunge.

Jac de Haan’s session on interactive YouTube videos opened up a whole new set of ideas for me. I am having a hard time at the moment, 5ish hours out of his session, trying to figure out widespread uses in a high school history classes. I think getting students to create a project using an interactive YouTube video would be great: find a momentous decision in history and go over the pros and the cons of each possible decision a person was faced with. After a contextualizing of the problem in the initial video, the video could branch to the discussion of the pros and cons of the different options this person was faced with. The video could conclude with the actual decision made and the impact this decision had on the world.

Finally, to end the day, it was very rewarding to get to hear a small student panel discuss their experience in a flipped classroom. Their positive, eloquent remarks about the flipped classroom were a great way to remind us about why flippers are taking this plunge: it’s all the kids!

Student panelists

So much to mull over – and day 2 is tomorrow. Can’t wait!

#FlipCon12, Day 0

Jac de Haan stepping in for Dan Spencer, Snapseed photo edit

There is something to be said for learning from folks for months and months on Twitter and then getting to meet them in person – it is a pretty cool thing. I was lucky enough to get to spend today at the #FlipCon12 pre-conference polishing up my lackluster Camtasia 2 for Mac skills. See the finished product here – make sure to keep your expectations low… (Background noise, cluttered desktop, etc etc etc.) It was neat to get to spend the day learning from Dan Spencer, Kristin Daniels, Jac de Haan, and Brett Clark, people from my PLN who I finally got a chance to meet, talk to, and learn from in person.

Takeaways from day 0? There was a lot of great energy today, and there were only about 1/3 of the number of folks as there will be at #FlipCon12 tomorrow – can’t wait for that energy and those ideas to triple! And despite the shabbiness of the video I added here, I am way more comfortable with Camtasia. And finally, the coolest idea from the day – screencast your feedback on student writing: do this as you read their submitted Google doc. This will hopefully let me provide the feedback I would have given my students in writing, but in video form. I hope this technique will allow me to leave more, and more detailed, feedback in a similar amount of time to the current amount it takes for me to give feedback in writing. I’m psyched to give it a try in my classroom in the fall!

Why I am in Chicago for #FlipCon12?

Ah ha – a great question. If you told me a year ago that I’d be leaving the Bay Area in my second week of summer vacation to go to a conference about flipped classrooms, I would have found your statement intriguing. If you would have told me that I would be supremely excited for this conference, well, things would have gotten just a little weirder. But here I am, psyched for #FlipCon12. How’d I get here?

I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in the Making Education Relevant and Interactive through Technology (MERIT) program through Foothill College this past year. Under the supremely capable leadership of Rushton Hurley and Diane Main, a cohort of about 60 mixed age level teachers and administrators were led through a very hands-on year of intensive educational technology training. I have written previously about the tremendous positive impact MERIT had on my teaching, and I am looking forward to the ways Rushton and Diane’s ideas on technology integration and engaging all students will continue to challenge me.

Through MERIT I also gained access to a ton of resources I just didn’t know about – I learned the wonder of Twitter (best PD in the world) and got to go to EdCampSFBay. This got the ball rolling towards #FlipCon12, though at the time I wouldn’t have known it. While at EdCampSFBay, I happened to sit next to a tall gentleman with a shaved head at lunch.  This guy was talking about flipped classrooms, which I knew nothing about. I was lucky enough to hear Ramsey Musallam speak that day as well as several other times throughout the year, and his ability to so lucidly state both the theoretical reasons to flip your classroom as well as what the practical aspects of what a flipped classroom looked like was deeply thought-provoking.

My exposure to Ramsey’s ideas around the flipped classroom eventually moved me into the Twitter-sphere, more specifically into the best PD of my week. Every Monday, from 5-6pm PST, the #flipclass chat fills my timeline with successes, struggles, and most importantly ideas for what a flipped classroom can do for the learning of all students. Without the impetus of so many honest, energetic practitioners of a flipped classroom, I would not be heading to Chicago for #FlipCon12.

So there you have it: MERIT + Ramsey Musallam + #flipclass = #FlipCon12. I’m beyond excited for what these coming days will hold for me, and more importantly the positive impact it will have on my students.