FlipCon13

Confused about how to incorporate the "Flip" in the age of Standards Based Grades while pushing towards Asynchronous Mastery Learning? How about making this all work with high-stakes testing or new standards in the elementary level? Sound too imposing? Come hear some ways it all of these seemly disparate ideas can come together and flourish.

I have taught upper elementary for 22 years, and I have employed the Flipped Class paradigm for the last two across the curriculum. In this session, I will share ideas strategies and resources that have worked well for me as well as encourage the asking of questions about how to integrate all of these parts into a cohesive whole (while retaining your sanity).5

A driving motto in my course is “embrace your learning” and a flipped classroom beautifully facilitates this goal. My students overwhelmingly voted in favor of the flipped approach. I believe efficiency of learning is the biggest win for an advanced course so will discuss the balance of time between videos and class work. Main areas of learning and assessment along with rationale behind the breakdown of the percentage of the final grade will be included. Students use objectives to help guide their learning. Daily work is either self-assessed or assessed using an online “homework” site, providing immediate feedback that maximizes our time together in class. Students are encouraged to redo quizzes for up to an 80. The “second chance” approach encourages students to push through difficult topics and attempt to master the material. I have also developed a method for test corrections that provides a valuable re-learning (and re-teaching) opportunity.

We all know isolation is not good, but often, we are the only ones in our school flipping our classes. This session is about how you can make room for collaboration in your practice, even when you don’t have a flipped learning colleague on site. Finding a collaborative partner is just the beginning. Building a collaborative partnership that can support, encourage, question, and help you is game-changing - for teachers AND students. Collaboration isn’t something we do to just reduce our workload; it transforms the way we communicate, the way we learn, and the way we teach. This workshop will cover the reasons why you should embark on a collaborative partnership, the practicalities of how to make it work, and how to help your students become more collaborative and reflective.

Participants in this session will review specific strategies and resources to utilize Flipped Project Based Learning with learners at both the middle and high school levels. The two presenters will share their own experiences with things like: Reverse Engineering Cameras, Building Rube Goldberg Machines, Computer Programming with Scratch, designing Minute to Win It challenges, and drafting fantasy Ultimate Frisbee Teams. In addition, presenters will offer comments and ideas how to embed subject standards into instruction under the umbrella of Flipped PBL. Helpful websites will be provided to begin building your own collection of Flipped PBL resources.

In the fall of 2012, Byron Public Schools (BPS), a small district of approximately 1850 students, incorporated its own variation of the flipped professional development coaching model to support the the technology integration needs of every Pk-12 educator. The technology tsunami was fastly approaching BPS! Online learning, Google Apps, iPads, Web2.0, BYOD had already made its way into the district, changing many of our classroom’s teaching and learning strategies. While we were fortunate to have “Pockets of Wow” (Doug Johnson) educators, the technology skills gap between the early innovators and late adopters was increasing at a rather fast pace. Traditional “sit and get” PD was not conducive to the amount of change technology had on teaching and learning. Technology PD could no longer be supported by 1 or 2 people. We needed to do something, it needed to impact every educator, and we needed to do it now.

The Byron digital learning network was formed and 7 new teacher leaders positions, called digital learning coaches (DLCs), were created. The district worked with the DLCs to develop a Flipped PD model that would support digital pedagogy and classroom innovation for ALL PK-12 teachers. This session will share key components of the plan as well as the triumphs (BIG GAINS) and tribulations of the district’s Flipped PD journey.

Despite engaging in extensive professional development prior to implementation of the flipped-mastery instructional model in my Chemistry – I classes, my journey was filled with mistakes and frustrations. In this presentation, I will first describe the steps I took prior to full implementation of the flipped-mastery learning model in my Chemistry - I classes. Second, I will describe the problems I experienced along the way that pointed to changes that still needed to be made for the flipped-mastery learning model to be successful with all of my first year chemistry students. Third, I will describe what I plan to do differently as I continue using the flipped-mastery learning model with my Chemistry – I classes next year. Finally, I will share success stories from students that learned how to take ownership for their learning in my version of a flipped-mastery learning environment.