Hi, I’m one of the teachers that attended the FLIP-IDEAL training week in the Netherlands in May 2019!
I teach at CVO Antwerpen, a training centre for adult education in Belgium, mainly to students trying to achieve their diploma of secondary education.
One of the sessions that really stuck by was the session ‘ICT to support ‘flipping the classroom’, held by Joris Van Waes (Schoolmakers). And here are 2 reasons why:
1) ICT is all around us teachers. “Why not give a try? Your students will love it!”
True. But is that really the reason why I should invest time in a flipped classroom? It seems there are more reasons than that:
- To determine the struggle of your students
- To clarify their thinking about subjects
- To be able to give fast feedback
- To use time in class more efficiently or in other words, do meaningful activities without a central teacher
- To differentiate as much as possible, before and during your class.
If your goal for setting up a flipped classroom doesn’t check one of these boxes, then just don’t.
2) Keep it short. Sounds good right?
A flipped classroom doesn’t have to take much of your time. You’re only taking part of your talking outside the classroom and no, it doesn’t have to look fancy. Blabberize allows you as a teacher to let Marie Curie herself explain how she invented radio activity, but as a beginner I leave this stuff to the professionals. Instead, there are other, more simple tools you can use to, for example, determine the struggle of your students.
I have been experimenting with Google Forms, not the most complex tool as you can easily add one to your own personal Google Drive (click on New and then on Google Forms). I first gave my students information about the 3 different scientific methods. I then asked them to watch 3 different movies I integrated in this form (simply by clicking on the YouTube symbol next to the question editor).
They were then asked which scientific method was demonstrated in that specific movie. The 3 methods were listed so all they had to do, is select the right answer. The result looked like this: https://forms.gle/Y6U6ebQ8mtmCs4TF8 (in Dutch but it gives you an idea).
When I, as a teacher, then click on ‘responses’, I get a visual overview of how my students scored for each question. For example:
The correct answer was ‘meten’. Only 20% of my students got it right. This tells me as a teacher:
- I should go over the concept of scientific meth
ods again in class and focus on the one they got wrong.
- I should provide more exercises in class concerning scientific methods.
- The prepatory information students had on the 3 scientific methods should be revised so that other groups in the future will score better.
Knowing this, why don’t you get started with your own short and simple flipped classroom?
Good luck!
Text by: Hannelore Audenaert, CVO Antwerpen
