A little background as to why I am starting this blog...
I had a "not so good" school year last year. I felt I wasn't being the kind of teacher I needed to be. I blamed the kids, the administrators, and myself for the issues in my room. The kids weren't interested in what I had to deliver to them and I grew more frustrated throughout the school year.
I decided to make myself have a relaxing summer. While relaxing I made some decisions that would eventually be seen in the classroom. I decided that I would do my best with what I was given. I know this sounds odd....wasn't I already doing that?!? I knew I could step it up and started looking at ways to engage my students.
I found a website at the end of last year (edmodo.com) but wasn't sure exactly how I could make it work. It looks like facebook, but for education. So that is where I decided to start my adventure. I use edmodo everyday now. My typing students submit their assignments on edmodo. My business students use it turn in assignments, get information from me and store information. The kids really like the ease of it and they also like that they can turn in their assignments from home.
In my looking on the Internet for other technologies to the kids interest (or even mine) I found a classroom management tool that is visual for the kids to see (classdojo.com). It allows the teacher to set the behaviors that both earn a point or take a point away. You set your classroom up and shine it on the board from your projector. I can even operate it from my phone as a remote. It has actually helped in my room. This year I don't feel as though I have behavior problems but it allows the kids to "see" where they are doing things right or wrong.
The next thing I found while researching was the concept of the flipped classroom. The idea behind it is that the teacher record their lesson in advance on the computer or through a webcam and give it to the kids the view at night. Then what would have been their homework is what they work on in class with the teacher present for help. The concept sounded very interesting to me with a few drawbacks. Being in an urban district means not all of my kids have Internet to be able to view these "lessons". The cure for that is for now letting the kids listen to the lessons in class.
The argument is that if they are going to watch the lesson in class why don't I just deliver the lesson to them. A ten minute online lesson will easily stretch into 30 to 40 with kids asking me to repeat something, wait because they haven't finished writing something down or me having to interrupt for students who I need to remind to pay attention. By having it online, they can pause the lesson, write things down, listen to them again or even have it open in another window to get the information while working on their work.
Eventually I want to move them to a true flipped classroom. For kids who don't have Internet but a computer I can put their lessons on a jump drive and for those who don't have a computer I can burn them to a DVD. If they still don't have these things they can come after school or before school to get their lessons.
Next blog....more on the flipped classroom!!
