I found my mind swimming and brimming with ideas for increasing student accountability and content retention after learning about the “flipped classroom” approach.  I had a moment of vertigo, as if looking down from some great height I was unsure how to descend, before I decided that I would explore this path freely even if less equipped than the pioneering “flippers” I was following.  I steadied myself for a heavy dose of path-less-taken or path-not-present and trusted in my capacity to orient myself in even the most unpredictable topography.  With my pedagogy as my compass and a bag of goodies amassed over my years in the classroom, I started to take my first steps.  Here were some of the things I encountered:

1)      I needed a way to record lessons-Luckily, with a baby on the way (born 1/14/12) I had already budgeted for a camcorder! I bought myself a Canon Vixia HFR20 HD Camcorder.  The guy warned me that I would have to go through some extra steps to get the video into Standard Definition (SD) but it would be worth having the HD for my daughter. Luckily it came with a tripod as part of the package deal.  I already had a Jing account for screencast (there are lots of competing software out there that do the same thing).  My classroom is outfitted with an innovation station that has a Lumens document camera that can record video to the PC.  With a USB desk microphone I was set!

2)      I needed a way to process the video lessons – Once I recorded a lesson with my video camera, here’s a run-down of what I did to get the video into a workable file size.

1. Convert the video to standard definition (SD) on my camcorder.

1. Transfer the files from my camcorder to PC desktop computer (files are .mpg) at this point.

1. Edit/Compress videos into roughly 4-6 min clips (so files would still have a decent resolution and stay under 100MB) using Windows Movie Maker and save them to my computer.

1. Since files now have the .wmv extension (windows media video), I decided to go the extra (often unnecessary step) of converting it to the more universal .mpeg extension.  This makes the files playable on macs, too.  For this I used the free website, www.convertfiles.com. 

3)      I needed a way to get the videos into student homes – Luckily all but one of my students has access to the internet at home.  I did some internet research for file hosting and website creation, and was momentarily discouraged by the cost and limited bandwith available.  I’m on a budget, afterall!  I finally settled on a Weebly Pro account because it was cheap ($2.99/mo), allowed me to upload unlimited files (each with a maximum of 100 MB), and had unlimited bandwith.  I found it to be extremely user-friendly despite the somewhat boring layout options. The ability to drag ‘n drop elements like files, text, video, and audio made publishing the videos  (post-editing) a breeze.   You can check out my website at www.keepgonzoweird.weebly.com. If you are wondering about that one student, I informed him (and his mother) about the resources available here at school.  I also offered to put the videos on a flash drive which I could provide, but he never took me up on it.

At this point, I was done practicing with the technical aspects of posting videos and I needed to start making some.  The next blog will describe some of the considerations I made as I engaged in that process.