iTeacher Lauren: flipped classroom

Thursday, November 6, 2014

SafeShare.TV + QR Code Smash!

I stopped by the Kindergarten wing yesterday, and here's what I saw!

Emily found a QR Code listening center on Teachers Pay Teachers for Thanksgiving stories, and the QR codes linked to videos of the stories. The students scanned the QR code and listened to the story as the video followed the pages and words. They were loving it!

One thing I noticed is that the videos were actually from YouTube, but were on a site called SafeShare.TV. On this site, you can put in a link to a YouTube video, and it will block out everything else around the video on a unique link.. even the ad that plays before it! Pretty nifty!

To test it out, I found the video on YouTube for Duck for President.

Then, I pasted the link into SafeShare.TV and clicked the Generate Safe Link button.

You can also click on Customize Video to choose just a portion or clip from the video to share on your link:

And voila! Your video is complete!

So the next step would be to create the QR Code that links to the video. That's easy, we can do that on QRstuff.com. Just copy/paste the SafeShare.TV link that you made into the link box:

Then click on Download QR Code and you can put it onto any worksheet, poster, or even just your SmartBoard for students to scan and watch!

Try testing this QR Code by using a QR Reader app, like Scan. Enjoy!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The Flipped Classroom

This afternoon at our faculty meeting, we will be starting a discussion around the concept of the flipped classroom. A Google search on the topic of the "elementary flipped classroom" brought up 12,700,000 results. WOW!

So, what is the flipped classroom? First, it is NOT just about watching videos for homework. It is a fuller cycle of learning, with deeper connections to both the content and the learning community members. Learning tasks can become engaging, relevant, authentic, and exciting. The flipped classroom also doesn't center around videos - teachers are still responsible for making decisions about which tools will best meet the needs of their students, keeping the overall learning climate and objectives in mind.

Jon Bergmann (@jonbergmann) has been coined as a co-founder of the flipped learning concept, and has an entire website dedicated to Flipped Learning, including videos, blogs, and resources on the topic.

Here is his advice for elementary teachers: "Don't flip a class: Flip a lesson."

One piece of advice he gives to elementary teachers is to not assign the video as homework, but make it a center in your classroom. The new term I have heard for this is The Cloned Teacher, from Jennie Magiera. I LOVE this term because it fits much better with our elementary classrooms and students.

Ready to try it? Here are examples I have found of what it could look like at each grade level:

Kindergarten

1st Grade

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

4th Grade

YOU! (Yes, you can be a flipped learner too! Searching YouTube to find what you want to do is an awesome way to learn!)

Wait, wait, wait.. are you saying I have to make all these videos for my kids? NO! There are hundreds upon thousands of videos that you can already use...! Here are just a few:

National Geographic Kids videos

And even BrainPop & BrainPop Jr!

One final video... Salman Khan's TED talk: Let's use video to reinvent education.