Week One - Sept 3-7, 2012

Well we finished out our first week of flipping in my 5th grade classroom.  This is my first year ever attempting flipping, so I'm definitely learning things as I go along.

The week started out with about 15% of my students not watching their videos at home.  As the week went that number decreased so that was VERY encouraging!  I think the kids were getting to see the fun things we were doing in class and the benefit of watching the videos.

Videos-
The videos are quick and easy to make.  I'm trying to stay a few lessons ahead with my videos because I actually have quite a few kids that are watching videos before they're supposed to!  I'm all for working ahead!  My longest video thus far has been 9 minutes.  Most have lasted about 6 min.


Access-
I am trying to provide as many ways as possibile for the kids to access the videos.
I have all the links on our class webpage (http://tnesloney.wix.com/math)
     - I upload videos to Sophia.org because they will host my videos and it's not blocked at school, so the students can access the videos at school at any time.  Sophia also allows me to embed a Google Form version of my WSQ for students to complete online.
     - I also upload videos to our class YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/tnesloney).  From that account I also link to other great instructional videos as well as that is where I upload the videos that will be creating this year.
     - I created an iTunes U account so students who have an Apple device could download the iTunes U app and access all videos
     -  Students can bring in a flash drive for me to put the videos on.
     - I burn the videos to re-writable DVDs
     - I have 18 iPod Nanos that I check out to students with the videos pre-loaded on them.
     -  I also allow students to come in before school or stay after to access videos.

Lessons
This has been the best part about flipping my classroom.  Now I have so much time to do really cool and fun activities with the kids that allow me to explore the concepts in ways I haven't be able to before.
They went around the school and took pictures of numbers with their devices and then took those numbers and wrote the out in word form.
They also spent time in groups of 4 using their iPod Nanos to record videos of them teaching the concept of "Comparing & Ordering Decimals".  It was awesome to see their excitement when I explained what they were going to get to do.  You could tell they'd never been "let loose" like that before.  I let them excericse all their creativity and create whatever kind of video they wanted.  Since they are 5th graders, and since this was their first time creating videos, some weren't amazing, haha.  BUT they learned, and they had a blast, and they are already begging me to allow them to make another video.  I took those videos that were completed and uploaded them to our class youtube page.

Overall
Overall, I don't know how I taught before Flipping.  I am so excited about the endless possibilites that this year presents.  There have been a little "push-back" from a few parents.  But that's to be expected because this is so different then what they are used to. And many parents aren't comfortable themseleves with the technology their kids know how to use.  But I'm getting those parents on my side slowly but surely.  Our first unit test is this Friday, so then we'll really get to see how well this is going.