Flipping the classroom -- my journey to the other side: Jenn Williams at TEDxRockyViewSchoolsED

I love social studies I absolutely just love it I can go off for hours the kids know it you're like hey how about that Syria and Miss Williams and and I'll just go I'll talk about politics economics history anything I absolutely love it I'll sit on the beach in Hawaii and read a book about you know geopolitical economics in South Africa something that's exciting to me and so a handful of my students loved it as well that they get right into the conversations and and these are the kids that follow current events and love it but then there's the kids who put their head down kind of check out as I'm all excited about whatever we're talking about and you know I always felt kind of guilty as I'm talking about Middle East policy or you know fiscal decisions by the government and and then what they're ending up having is homework because I'm like well we didn't get to the assignment today so do it for homework and you know I I knew most of the students were learning but I wanted all of the students to be learning and and I wanted to fix that situation to get more of my my students engaged so as a social studies teacher my homework every night is to watch the news and so I actually watch three different news programs every night and every Sunday night I watch 60 minutes a good thing I like this stuff so one night as I was watching 60 minutes they had a segment on the Khan Academy which I had seen before but this time it actually clicked and and what it is is it's a flipped classroom approach to instruction and something just really caught my attention it was probably was the phrase the interviewer had said if they get stuck they can get one-on-one help from the teacher less lecturing more interaction and that's exactly what I wanted is is to have that interaction and to give the kids that passion there's nothing more exciting to me than to have a kid come in especially those 10 - 2's that are just like and then at the end of the year they're excited and they're engaged and they're participating that is so exciting for me and so I want to tell you guys about this flipped classroom and how it works and how upfront it is a lot of work but in the end it's just so worth it and so what you do is you take the lecture component and again my lectures I would plan for half an hour they'd usually be about 50 minutes look at the clock and go oh we're out of time so you shorten it down into ten minute videos and the videos are what's for homework and then the students have time to work on their projects in class where I can give them that feedback and let them know how they're doing versus you know them working on the project at home and doing it wrong and bringing it to class and I actually have a sample of that in my classroom that I have this beautiful diorama it's like this big it's huge and it's this amazing war scene and there's hills and trees and tanks and everything little soldiers everywhere and it was a fail because the assignment was to visually demonstrate the Cold War there's nothing in the diorama about the Cold War but and of course I let her redo the assignment she'd worked really really hard but I have that in my room to show the students that you know you could work really hard on something but if you're going in the wrong direction all of that time then is spent not getting to the goal that you wanted to get to whereas if she'd been working on that in the classroom I could have given her that feedback and been like okay so how does this fit with the Cold War so this is why you call it the flipped classroom and addition to this the videos that I've created are an amazing review tool that that kids can use to come back to and that's important because there is a foreign language to social studies it really is a different language and I love this phrase the fiscal and monetary policies of a Kensie an economy during a recession just scares the pants off people just like that is foreign language but I have a video now and so if the kid had missed the lecture that day or if they just didn't understand the lecture that day before that was it your hoped you better look it up in the textbook you better try and figure it out but we're moving on now they can go back and watch the video again and again and again until they can really understand that that concept and you know that really just allows for the learning at anytime any place any place it really does it fits with that perfectly and so you know I've heard the phrase journey several times already this morning and that's really what I thought of is is this is my journey or my hike into the flipped classroom and while it was work just like a hike it was so worth it just like at the end of a hike where you have that amazing beautiful view and so I started with my grade 12 classroom last year the first thing I had to figure out was just how I was actually going to make videos and so it took a long time for me to kind of figure out my process and I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail here about how I do it but if you want to know I can definitely fill you in and I really appreciated all of the advice that so many people in the division were able to give me in the end I was able to use the technology that's right on our Mac computers to be able and I am NOT a technical person at all now the first video I made took me 8 hours 10 minute video I'm down to five and then that still sounds like a long time and again it's because I'm a little type-a and so I'm a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the videos but you know that five hours is worth it because then I can come back to it again and again and again I think of course the perfectionist in me is in the future you need to fix this and you know YouTube has this cool thing now where you can actually embed quizzes into the YouTube video and I totally want to do that but right now I just got to get the videos out so it's kind of like a long hard Hill on a hike get that stuff done the next day I experienced was getting the kids to buy in because a lot of times they would just kind of passively watch the video once and then come to class and and not really have that understanding they just kind of expected the same old routine in the class that I'd be putting notes on the board and and they started to realize there weren't any notes in my class and they started to realize how valuable the the videos were for finding information for their product projects and that's a really important part of the flipped classroom you can't just go well I gave worksheets for homework so they'll do the worksheets in class no it needs to be those inquiry projects where they're actually seeing the value of the information they learn from the videos and from the discussions we have in class so quite often we would start a class with reviewing the video reading an article having a short debate something like that and then giving them time to work on their projects and I'm very transparent I actually show them my unit plans and tell them okay you know shut me up at 11:30 that's your project time and if you want me to keep talking about Syria I will but your project starts at 11:30 and that way it really helps them to kind of see that real-world application so there was a really great moment I guess you could call it going downhill on the trail but of course you don't want to use the term downhill and idea for education but it's when students started to use their smartphones to access the videos during class time it was a little disarming at first you know you all say my voice doesn't sound like that and I've learned actually it does because I can hear myself all over the room and what I really love those I'd broken them of Google right they just they think Google is the end-all be-all and it's not and you know a lot of them for their first project Google didn't if you like this took me eight hours and I'd be like well did you use the class resources well no I googled it yeah you Google individualism and collectivism you're gonna get a couple billion hits so good luck with that and so the students realized that there was a purpose to come into class to being part of the class because that was giving the information to help them find the answers for their projects in their research now there were things that I worried about like how I was gonna condense a 40-minute lecture into a 10-minute video and what I was really kind of sad at first was I wasn't gonna be able to tell all my stories that I have all these great little stories to tell and I thought it was actually gonna be a really tough part but actually I found out it was awesome because I could tell all of my stories but to individual groups and they were listening instead of part of the class listening and part of the class sleeping I could actually have that one-on-one interaction as I explained to them how the Hunger Games it relates to the ancient Roman Empire or the chair socks lady that perfectly shows how capitalism actually works cuz she wouldn't make chair socks unless somebody was buying it's true there's people that have so another rocky part of my pathway was trying to get all of the students engaged you know you hear all the time that if you use project-based learning and if you use the flipped classroom you'll engage all of your students and that's not true that my students who were already engaged and were part of those great discussions they blew me away with the things that were doing my average students blew me away as well with the things they're doing but it was my less engaged students my students who struggled that actually found this really really difficult because it's a lot more self-directed and so I did a lot of check-ins to check with their progress and even then some of those less engaged less academic students have a hard time getting those things done and meeting those check-ins it's it's not a miracle cure all by any means they quite often just want it give me just give me the textbook questions please can you just give me a feeling a blank worksheet yeah because I don't want to have to think I just want to find the answers and be like yeah that's my goal I want you to just passively find answers and put them in a blank don't think just memorize and so it kind of frustrates them a little bit but what can help those students is the fact that I can also get their parents engaged in the process that the parents have access to the same class resources that the students have that it's all open and so that way when I have a conversation with the parents they can be watching the videos and they can see that all the resources that are available and so they they get empowered as well to try and help their student with all the resources so another great moment came at the end of the first semester so sticking with the hiking analogy you can kind of say to that lookout that's often halfway up the the mountain there and it was as the diploma exams were coming and of course the students are all worried and asking about review tutorials and one of the students said he really needed help remembering the Philosopher's he just couldn't really keep them all straight and I before I even said anything one of the students said oh just go to video number three remember that's the one on the Philosopher's nas you're actually doing self-directed learning and I did end up doing one tutorial but that was it I just said you guys watch the videos and then on this afternoon before the exam ask me any questions that you're still not sure of and see if I can can explain it in a little bit of a different way for you but they were able to access it again at their time and at their pace the next semester I kept refining the lessons in the classroom to be complimentary and my website I'm loving it now because it's become this repository for anything that I find useful in the class it used to be that if I found a really cool website I'd print it off put it in my binder and then I'd hope I'd remember to come back to it the next time I taught that lesson well now it's there and so sometimes during class I'll say okay let's go on the class website and we're gonna pull up a couple of things that we're going to discuss together in class but no matter what they always have access to all of these things that I have found is really helpful in their learning and so it's it's this great repository that everybody has access to and of course there's uphill battles those weaker students again the second semester one became so frustrated me she started yelling at me she's like you're not doing your job you're making us go to the website to see what we miss when we skip class and you expect us to learn on our own you need to do your job I was like bring it I dare you to complain to somebody go tell your mom how I'm making you be a self-directed learner so you know again it says those students that are used to the you know British Imperial model have memorized this do this do this it's sometimes a little tough for them to kind of reach outside of that comfort zone so at the end of the year as I finished the hike of piloting this flipped classroom it was so worth it yeah the hours I put into making the videos are ridiculous that my husband makes fun of me he's you know because I'm coming home late at night he's like you know you can only win that award once why aren't you just giving the kids textbook questions and I was mentioning this to a colleague the other day and some of my I didn't even notice some of my students were standing beside us and they turn their way no questions and again I was like hey so they actually like this this is actually working and engaging them I love the fact that I have so much more time to have those real-world discussions in the classroom that I'm not marking and going through textbook questions and okay take these notes down and waiting for them to get the notes down that I I've actually got a lot more time in the class to have really really great discussions you know if felt really great when teachers around the province were telling me that they were using my website and they were using the information that I had made available one of them said you should charge for it and I was like don't quite know how I'd get charged for it's like you should monetize your YouTube videos like yeah I don't want commercials on my YouTube videos for the kids but it was just cool that that they thought it was valuable I love the fact that so many of my students are becoming self-reliant and that they're staying engaged that I have a Facebook page where we paste current events and and use that in our current events discussions that is linked to the class website and I have students who graduated two three years ago that every once in a while will post something on the page either a current event or a comment and to me that is just so wonderful to have those lifelong learners and so yeah hiking is hard creating a flipped classroom is hard but man is the view at the end so worth it thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 51,945

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: ted, ted talks, English, ted talk, ted x, TEDx, TEDxRockyViewSchoolsED, tedx talk, tedx, tedx talks, Canada, Education

Id: Y3b9tCmUmA4

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 14 2013