Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Why experts say now is the time to assess your district’s edtech use

Key points:

For much of the past 12 years, Casey Rimmer sometimes felt like a “dream killer” when it came to the edtech tools used in her district. As the executive director of curriculum and instruction for Union County Public Schools, a district of over 41,000 students outside Charlotte, N.C., she was often tasked with letting teachers know why a potential new tool wasn’t approved for use.

Lately, though, the district has flipped the script. Now they ask teachers to check the tool’s data privacy policy and age requirements when making a request, so they have a better understanding of why a tool is—or isn’t—a good fit. When teachers feel part of the discussion, it often leads to productive conversations, she explains. …Read More

How to flip the classroom and create avid learners

The traditional sequence of teaching using lectures, discussion, projects, and testing was upended during the pandemic as teachers adapted to digital classrooms and students took on more responsibility for their learning.

Now that students are back in school, many teachers are finding that continuing to use a blend of digital and face-to-face classroom learning methods can be effective in boosting student engagement and fostering constructive discussions.

The flipped classroom is one pedagogy that has been especially fruitful by reversing the traditional lecture and homework components of a class. In many traditional classrooms, the majority of class time is spent in a lecture-and-listen format. The flipped classroom replaces this static model by engaging students in active, dynamic learning. …Read More

How film and a flipped classroom lead to student success

According to research, in a typical classroom lecture students will generally retain only five percent of the material presented. Today’s teachers are looking to new methods of teaching and learning to improve student engagement and achievement, including tech-based solutions like the flipped classroom.

Designed to create an environment for students to actively participate and engage with the material provided, the flipped classroom is shown to exhibit learning gains almost two standard deviations higher than those found in traditional classes.

Related content: 8 principles to help you advance to flipped learning 3.0…Read More

5 key network steps for supporting educational technology

Today’s K-12 students are coming to the classrooms toting three or more mobile devices, from smartphones and laptops to tablets and smart watches. Teachers are putting more of their educational content online and streaming it to their students, administrators are storing more student information in the cloud, and district officials are automating more of the schools’ operations. There is the Internet of Things, digital signage, and video being used to monitor cafeterias. Technology continues to shape the future of how we educate our children and operate our schools, from flipped classrooms to the use of augmented and virtual reality.

At the center of all this is the network, and more and more the wireless network. Where connectivity was once a nice luxury, it is now a must-have, and increasingly the focus of many school district CTOs is making sure that those networks are up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that they’re secure.

Here are five network issues that tech directors must focus on.…Read More

Who are the educators driving flipped learning?

Educators searching for flipped learning inspiration can now find it in a list of 100 people who are innovating and inspiring others in their pursuit of flipped instruction.

The Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI), a worldwide coalition of educators, researchers, technologists, professional development providers and education leaders, published the FLGI 100, an annual list identifying the top 100 innovative people in education who are driving the adoption of the flipped classroom around the world.

The list is compiled by the FLGI executive committee, led by Jon Bergmann, one of the leaders of the flipped classroom movement. The FLGI 100 list includes flipped learning researchers, master teachers, technology coaches, literacy specialists, math and science experts and educators from kindergarten to higher education.…Read More

What does a flipped classroom look like at each grade level?

Although the term “flipped learning” is almost universally recognized, teachers apply it in many forms, in all grades levels, and in various school environments. If you are a teacher using flipped learning, the chances are that you share some similarities with other teachers who flip—as well as some differences. However, the major commonality among all flipped learning teachers is that every one of them is creating personal learning experiences for each student.

We asked three flipped teachers — one from an elementary school, one from a junior high, and one from a high school — to describe what learning looks like in their world.

Beth Hobbs, third-grade teacher
Burkett Elementary, Pennsylvania
…Read More

Does your school have a growth mindset when it comes to change?

Want your tech rollout to be successful? First, you need the right mindset

Most educational organizations want to improve teaching and learning by leveraging technology. The terms blended learning and its subset, flipped learning, are touted extensively as useful educational goals.

However, there are a number of fundamentals that need to be in place in order to increase the likelihood of organization wide success. This contrasts with the success of the “lone experimenters”; the innovators and early adopters who will implement change no matter what the environment is like.

Fundamentals fall into a number of categories. I will consider one — mindset — in this article. Two previous articles examined infrastructure and leadership.…Read More

The new way to create flipped video in 60 seconds without adding software

Use PowerPoint to make tutorial videos for flipped or blended learning

Time strapped teachers need support—we all know this. Now there is a quick and easy way to create even more flexible video tutorials for your blended or flipped learning classes. The tutorials can then be watched over and over. Best of all, this solution uses PowerPoint, which many teachers are already comfortable with.

Previously I’ve outlined how to create Khan Academy-style video tutorials quickly and easily (using Office Snip) in a recent article. Those tutorials had a static background. “Active” (changing) backgrounds are also possible as they allow the teacher to record anything that is visible on a computer screen.

Simple and easy…Read More

The app that lets you create Khan Academy-style videos in 60 seconds

How flipped educators can create video tutorials a la Khan in no time flat

P West Screen snip 2Blended learning and flipped learning just got a whole lot easier.

Anyone can now create learning resources for students in little more time that is required for a normal explanation of a topic.

  • Recording solutions to math problems — almost as quick as solving the problem on paper.
  • Highlighting important text, and explaining concepts along the way — a breeze.
  • Sketching, labelling and explaining diagrams with audio annotation — child’s play.
  • Providing personal feedback on a student’s work — super simple.
  • Taking a photograph of anything – an art work, an experiment, a building – and then drawing on it while explaining concepts — quick and easy.

The recordings can then be played on virtually any device, and are easily placed in a LMS or OLE (Online Learning Environment).…Read More

One startling fact about flipped learning

Flipped learning now surpasses all other digital trends

flipped-learning-speakFlipped learning has been on education’s radar for the last two years, with many schools experimenting with a teaching and learning style well-suited for 21st century learning. But new results from a national survey reveal just how popular flipped learning has become.

According to the recently released 2013 Speak Up National Research Project findings, flipped learning—defined in the survey as using lecture videos as homework while using class time for more in-depth learning such as discussions, projects, experiments, and to provide personalized coaching to individual students—is surpassing all other digital trends in K-12 schools.

Among district administrators, 25 percent identify flipped learning as already having a significant impact on transforming teaching and learning in their district, surpassing other trends such as educational games and mobile apps (21 percent), and even online professional learning communities for teachers and administrators (19 percent).…Read More

Don’t make these mistakes with flipped learning

From stale practices to no accountability, even flipped learning can fail students

learning-flipped-mistakesFlipped learning has taken off in classrooms across the country, but what many educators are realizing is that the new toy feeling of videos as homework is wearing off. The reason: You can’t re-package stale teaching techniques as something new.

To get the most out of flipped learning, the trick is in the design.

During a recent edWeb.net webinar on flipping the science classroom, Marc Seigel, a chemistry teacher at Middletown High School in Middletown, N.J., explained how four years ago, the concept of flipped learning was intriguing and just catching on.…Read More