The Nuts and Bolts of Flipping

What is flipping and how does one go about doing it?  First, let me tell you that it is never too late!  Students can adapt to most situations, so even if you did not start the year off with a flipped classroom, I truly believe you can make the transition at any time.  In fact, just last week a fabulous first-year teacher we hired over the summer came to me and asked for advice with her Honors Chemistry class.  She felt she was boring them and “noting” them to death with PowerPoints.  I told her she needed to have the courage to give up some of the material and let the students take on the responsibility of learning that material through small group work or other activities.  Literally, the next day she came back in my room with a huge smile and an excited attitude about the change in her perspective regarding that class.

At the bottom of this post is an infographic that has been making the rounds on Twitter – it does a great job explaining the flipped model.  It would also be great to share with skeptical colleagues, administration, and parents.

While I am going to share with you how I make my videos that my students watch on their own time, I want to emphasize that the flipped classroom is not just about the videos.  In fact, the videos are simply a means to an end.  The end goal is to get more class time (read: one-on-one time) with students to dig deeper into the material through activities, labs, and real-world problem solving.  Instead of delivering notes all day, I now have so much more time to pursue interesting and exciting adventures with my eager students.  I also have more time to assess each student’s understanding and give extra help where needed.

But, to many, the most daunting aspect of flipping IS making the videos.  My advice is to start small and use as much material that has already been produced by others as possible while you are still getting your feet wet.  Here is a list of the 25 best free online educational videos – definitely add Khan Academy to that list, too.  Personally, I have decided to make my own videos for my Honors Biology classes and use Paul Anderson’s videos for AP Biology.

I feel that most students will respond better and learn more from seeing and hearing their own teacher on the video they watch at night.  In the comments section of this article, there is interesting dialogue on this topic.  I would be very interested in reading further research on the validity of my “feeling”.

Paul Anderson actually made a YouTube video for teachers on how to make a screencast for your students – this helped me a lot!  Always remember to keep the viewer engaged with movement, writing, and interesting examples or stories to highlight your point.  If you don’t want your face on the video, you don’t have to – there are options out there with just voiceover.  In my most recent videos, I have decided to engage the student even more by assigning tasks during the video that we will then discuss in class the next day.  For example, they have to come up with their own analogy to the parts of the cell or they have to copy down a table I show in the video regarding plants vs. animal cells.  Hopefully, these assignments cause them to interact with the material in yet another manner besides reading and watching the video.

Like Paul Anderson, I use ScreenFlow for Mac, but this is an expensive option (I did the free trial before committing).  Other options include Camtasia, Screenium, Jing, CamStudio, and iShowU.  My videos are 10-15 minutes in length and include everything I want my students to know about that chapter (most chapters have 2 videos for them).  It is time consuming to prepare, record, and edit each screencast.  I pretty much set aside a total of 3 hours per screencast.  It takes about an hour to make the PowerPoint that I record over, then I’ll spend 15-20 minutes making notes about what exactly I want to say and when, then I usually only do one take of 10-15 minutes, and then editing takes about an hour (at least with ScreenFlow).  I feel the product is well worth it and will hopefully last me a few years before I decide to make new videos.