History #flipclass Discussion

I was lucky enough to get to hang out on Google+ tonight with David Fouch and Tom Driscoll and talk about what the early year in a flipped history class has looked like for us. We also talked a bit about what flipped-mastery looks like in our classrooms. Some cool ideas and questions came out of this discussion. Check it out below!

I'm Excited

Why? Several reasons, actually.

First and foremost, by all appearances I have had the privilege of receiving a group of freshmen that are willing to engage in intellectual work and are willing to put their conceptions of a history class aside and engage in history. Those are excellent signs - I’m excited!

My students have completed five of the six weeks of my introduction to history unit. They have been introduced, on a basic level, to the critical thinking strategies and some of the technology tools that they will need to be familiar with in order to succeed in my class. It seems their conceptions of what a history class is are starting to swing away from their previous experiences - also exciting.

I’m excited that we are currently immersed in a week-long mini-unit/project that has students collaborating to create the context of a zombie apocalypse that threatens their safety, then weighing the pros and cons of escape locations. Students are engaged and are learning to collaborate more effectively in person and online. They are increasing their competency with collaborative Google tools and (excitingly) turning to each other for tech help, not me. This last one is kind of awesome, because it has happened organically in a couple of classes, without my pushing students to ask each other before they come to me with a tech problem or question.

I’m excited because initial feedback from parents at Back to School Night and in emails about the changes I am trying to make in my classroom has been positive.

But I’m most excited to start (in a week) the all-in flipped mastery democracy and revolutions unit that I’ve been scheming about for most of the summer. (Yes, I’ve also thoroughly schemed my Industrial Revolution unit.) I’m psyched to try out applying Ramsey Musallam’s Explore-Flip-Apply framework in a history class. I’m curious - and very optimistic - that time spent in the Explore phase will create some desire to know and understand our democracy and revolutions unit, and that the thinking done in the Explore phase will create some great schematic hooks for the remainder of our unit.

I’m excited to see my students really start to own their learning, and to be held accountable for mastering what they know. I’m looking forward to more intentionally and explicitly integrating current events into every unit I teach. I’m anxious to see what sort of creative products my students create this year when they are given the opportunity to show their learning in diverse ways.

It’s a good place to be in. Am I low on sleep? Yes. Will there be struggles as freshmen start to deal with autonomy in the classroom for the first time in their lives? Most certainly. But I’m excited to learn with my students, and to keep thinking about how to best challenge and engage all of my students.

Classroom Applications From CUERockStar

I was lucky enough to spend three days this week at CUERockStar, a teacher technology camp. The learning I was able to do there was great and will make up the bulk of the post below. I also continued my summer theme of introducing myself to my PLN – it is always cool to walk up to folks (at CUERockStar it was Jon Corippo, Danny Silva, and Robert Pronovost) and introduce yourself. Connecting a face with a twitter handle is always fun.

So what’d I learn? I’m going to stick to practical applications in my classroom. Check them out!

Edit confirmation in Google forms: When students submit something, anything, in a Google form, they get a page showing their response that looks like this:

Ramsey Musallam showed a way to edit the text of this ‘thanks for your submission’ textbox. To do this, while on your Google form, click ‘More actions’ then ‘Edit confirmation.’

This is especially useful for teachers who are flipping their classroom. If students are aware of the topics they had difficulty internalizing, either based on their responses to questions on a Google form or just through their own metacognition, teachers can use this ‘Edit confirmation’ tool to link to an extremely quick (like 20-30 seconds) video explaining the answer to a particular question from the Google form. Another strategy here could be to link to a specific point in the video students watched that goes over the content that the question dealt with (for instance, at 1:45 of the video I discussed the causes of the French Revolution).

Additionally, if teachers link these short explanation videos with URL shorteners such as goo.gl or bit.ly that track the number of times that URL is used, teachers would then know what areas of content students are self-selecting to review (in addition to the feedback the teacher would get from the answers students submit on the initial Google form). Pretty awesome – and easy – tweak to implement!

Instagram test review: I’ve been lucky enough to see Lisa Highfill present before, at the Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators conference. She has been greatly influential in pushing me to use social media more in my classroom. I was lucky enough to go along on a photo walk and class in Yosemite National Park at CUERockStar that she co-led with Nicole Dalesio. I learned more about cool photo editing apps on an iPhone (my favorites, all paid apps: PhotoWizard, Snapseed, and PhotoToaster) and also heard about application of Instagram in the classroom.

Lisa talks a lot about using Instagram to document learning in her classroom, and I plan on doing this. However, she teaches 5^th graders. I am hopeful that I can build on the fact that I have students who have their own Instagram accounts. Using her ideas, I came up with an idea for using Instagram for test review with my 9^th and 10^th graders. Students get assigned a topic out of the unit – I’ve outlined this project for my first unit of the year about democracy and revolutions. Assume there are seven student groups who draw for the topic of their photo: one for the French Revolution, one for the Glorious Revolution, one for the American Revolution, three for the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers, and one free choice photo topic. Students review the content of their assigned topics then go out and take their pictures from somewhere on campus that represents, to them, the topic they chose. These pictures would then be posted to Instagram and Twitter using the class hashtag so I can locate the pictures.

After giving the students about 20 minutes to review their assigned content, wander campus, and take and post their group pictures they will return to my classroom. I will upload the hashtagged Instagram posts and each group will present their picture as well as an explanation for how their picture shows their assigned topic. I am hoping that this emphasis on the higher end of Bloom’s taxonomy will help students to internalize more of the content than they would individually.

How to apply Explore-Flip-Apply in a history class: However, the coolest classroom application that will come out of CUERockStar for me? I’ve written about what Exlore-Flip-Apply (EFA) might look like in a history class before, but to get to pick Ramsey’s brain for a half hour about this topic was a real treat. This will become a subsequent blog post – I need to finish off my democracy and revolutions unit plan before I write about it, but here’s the teaser for you – the picture that came out of our discussion:

So there are my CUERockStar classroom applications takeaways. Clearly, the last one – EFA in a history class – has the largest ramifications for my teaching. For the West Coasters that might stumble across this post, CUERockStar is well worth checking out. As a final note, I’ll let you know what tech tools I’ll be buying based on my experience at CUERockStar.

·       Upgrade my MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion

·       Reflection app for my MacBook – this will allow me to mirror my iPhone 4S to my computer screen (which can then be projected to my class through an LCD projector), creating a mobile document camera. What a cool way to show student work. Or elicit feedback. Or do any number of super cool things!

Screenshot of my MacBook with Reflection showing
my iPhone 4S's screen on my computer

·       A Wacom Bamboo Splash pen tablet

Explore-Flip-Apply in a history class

Thanks, Snagit!

On Saturday I happened upon a conversation between two people that I follow on Twitter, Tom Driscoll and Ramsey Musallam. Tom was curious about social studies teachers using Ramsey’s Explore-Flip-Apply (EFA) framework in a flipped classroom. I had begun outlining a blog post about how I planned to use EFA in my classroom next year, but this conversation put some urgency behind finishing this post.

As I understand it, EFA begins with students exploring, via inquiry, a problem posed to them by their teacher. Students build knowledge about this problem in the explore phase, and come to partial (or more than partial) answers to the problem posed by the teacher. In the flip phase, gaps in knowledge and student misconceptions are corrected with direct instruction around content knowledge, often in the form of teacher-created screencasts. To quote Ramsey, “…the most rewarding aspect of delaying direct instruction…is observing students construct, and in many instances even master, content before I take an active instructional role.” (source) After the flip, students are asked to apply their newly gained knowledge in a novel way. Again, this was a bare bones description; one of Ramsey’s more detailed write-ups of EFA can be found here. Ramsey’s write-up for using EFA in a chemistry (or other lab-based) class is a compelling one, but I am a history teacher.  I can see EFA playing out in two different ways in a history class.

EFA in H/SS, Version 1

I see the one possible way of using the EFA framework at the beginning of a unit. For the explore phase, which will occur on the first day of a unit, I will give students time to wrestle with the essential question for a unit. A brief note to differentiate essential questions from unit questions: unit questions are more specific in referencing, in my case, a historical time period, while essential questions are asked broadly about the big ideas of a unit. For instance, an essential question for a unit on imperialism might ask, “What is the best way for an oppressed people to try to gain their freedom?” while the unit question would ask, “What is the best way for an imperialized people to try to gain freedom?” By giving students time to work around these more general big ideas and questions from a unit through the unit’s essential question, and doing it collaboratively, I hope to have students both activating relevant schema they have regarding the big ideas from the essential question while also allowing time for kids to teach each other and build each other’s schema around the ideas a given unit is based around. This explore phase would start with individual brainstorming, followed by a group share-out. I can see students then moving on to create something more concrete to solidify the schema they activated or gained from the explore phase: concept maps, written pieces, or other ways they deem appropriate to share their knowledge. In the essential question above about an imperialism unit, a T-chart would be a natural way to compare possible ways people overcome oppression.

EFA Version 1 (excuse the rudimentary graphics...)

In this version, I see the flip and apply phases as a recursive process throughout the unit (see right). To further use the imperialism example, students would gain knowledge via video and primary and secondary source documents (the flip) about the reasons behind imperialism then apply that knowledge, perhaps in a critical paragraph. Next, the flip would happen again and expose students to different resistance methods used by imperialized nations. Students then apply their knowledge creating a recommendation for countries to most successfully resist or end oppression by looking into resistance movements – both successful and unsuccessful – in imperialized countries. So while this example is over generalized, but hopefully the point is clear: one initial explore session followed by a recursive flip-apply loop.

EFA in H/SS, Version 2

A way to beef this up, to try to give students an opportunity for think through the ideas of sections of a unit as opposed to only the overarching question of the unit, would be to chop up the recursive flip-apply process I described in the paragraph above. Students could still use the initial explore section based around the essential question for the unit I described above for the entire unit – it is never a bad idea to activate and build relevant schema – but then could jump into the truer EFA cycle. If the initial content in an imperialism unit is the causes of imperialism, students could spend time working through a question like ‘what causes people to prioritize their needs over the needs of others?’ These answers could come from life experiences, movies, books, or anywhere else students see answers to this question. Then students would gain knowledge via video and primary and secondary source documents (the flip) about the reasons behind imperialism then apply that knowledge, perhaps in a critical paragraph like I described above.

Next, a new EFA loop could begin about resistance to imperialism. Based on the simplified unit structure listed above, students could then go back and review their initial brainstorm around the essential question for the unit and add to their initial response – in whatever form it was in – with information about the motives behind imperialism that had been covered in class since the initial explore session around resistance to oppression. Then, the flip-apply section I described earlier could occur: students research resistance movements against imperialism and create advise for countries dealing with imperializers.

However, there are some problems here.

• EFA makes so much sense for a lab-based class – the inquiry has real value and is so tangible: students are exploring and learning in such an engaging way. Could the explore sections I wrote about above be spiced up with something more visual than a simple question? Certainly a video or a short written piece could be used. To me, without having tried to teach using EFA in my classroom yet, there just seems to be just a bit less authenticity to the way I am currently conceptualizing the explore section.
• How does EFA fit into a self-paced, mastery style of flipped class? My initial thought is that the explore section loses some of the intensity and authenticity if it is done in small groups (who are working through the unit at a similar pace) than if the explore section is done as an entire class.
• If I use EFA version one from above – one giant whole group explore session followed by the recursive loop of flip-apply done self-paced – how do you keep that desire to know, which comes from the explore section of EFA, high? Refer often back to your initial work around the essential question? Update the product of that brainstorm day, whatever it is, often?

I’m left with a lot of questions. Clearly, getting back into my classroom in the middle of August and trying this out will answer some of them. I’d love feedback though – how are teachers using EFA in non-lab-based classes? How do you envision EFA fitting into a history classroom? What ways of applying EFA in a history (or non-lab-based) class did I not think of? Thanks in advance!