Today I changed up the routine a little by showing one of the videos in class.  I know there are a few students who just haven’t made time to watch any of them, and I wanted them to see how nonthreatening and helpful the information is.  Yesterday, the students “discovered” the rules for exponents in quotients, and the video today firmed up their understanding.  I heard a lot of “Ahhhhh, I see!”  

Having examined their notes from earlier videos, I knew I needed to help them understand what to write down and what they could skip.  For example, when I refer back to something earlier in a video, I usually underline it or draw an arrow pointing to it.  That way the students can follow my reference visually.  They were drawing those arrows and doing that underlining in their own notes!  Taking the time to show a video during class time allowed me to teach them an important online learning academic skill.

The video that they are watching tonight is essential viewing because exponential functions are new for all of these students.  They will tackle the LTF Algebra 1 lesson, “Exponential Functions Exploration” tomorrow in their groups.  This is one of the great benefits of flipping: we can do more exploration, more activities, and more LTF lessons!

A majority of students are learning more and doing better than they were in the traditional routine.  In most cases, the students who are still struggling are those who have serious attendance issues.  These kids could watch the videos and stay on track, but they are not choosing to do so.  I’m going to tackle that issue individually with those students rather than trying to make some systemic change to address the situation.  One step that will help a few of them is to dissolve dysfunctional groups and reassign those students to other groups that have open slots.  I had to do this for one group in one class yesterday, and it has already made a difference for those students academically. 

Now that Algebra 1 is settled and working well, it’s time to turn more attention to the Algebra 2 course and get it flipped, too!

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.

Tomorrow begins our spring semester, and this will officially begin the flipping for my classes.  My Pre-AP Algebra 2 students will spend a couple of days reviewing some material (rational exponents, nth roots) that they learned back in December but that wasn’t tested on the semester exam, so their first video lesson won’t be assigned until Wednesday.  Meanwhile, my Algebra 1 students will be puzzling through a “discovery lesson” in class tomorrow.  We’ll see if they can work their way through numeric examples to the generalized form of the rules for multiplying monomials with exponents.  If they struggle, or if they just need direct instruction on the rules with some worked-out examples, there will be a video to watch on this topic.  I just now uploaded it, because I’d prefer that they not watch the video before trying the lesson in class.  

When I watched the new video after making it, I realized that I had made an error in writing the final answer for one of the examples I solved.  Here’s what happened:   .  Oops.  I acknowledged the error while editing the video in Camtasia. Usually, the only editing I do consists of removing sections--at the beginning or end of the video, or maybe where my voice starts to go due to seasonal allergies.  This time, I added a big blue arrow pointing to the absent exponent and added “oops--forgot the 2!”  It’s a quick fix, not something I’m really proud of, but it does give me an easy way to check who will have watched the video!  “Why was there a big blue arrow in the video?”  :)

The lesson I learned is that I should have recorded this lesson as three different clips--one for each of the rules that the students are practicing.  I’m coming to this process without any real video editing experience but with a veteran teacher’s sense of what the lesson should look like and how the concepts should be introduced.  I bet this won’t be the last lesson I learn in this process!

PS  If you are interested in seeing the page that the Algebra 1 students are working through, visit the LTF math forum.  I'll post the pdf in a message in the middle school and high school folders so you can see the whole lesson cycle.