9 Flipped Classroom and Professional Development

Page 238 of Chapter 10 conveys the concept of a flipped classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch prerecorded lectures at home and complete assignments in class that would usually be considered homework. Some of my professors even do this now in a handful of my courses. The professors will assign either a podcast, PowerPoint, or video for us to review at home so we can use class time for more in depth discussions and quizzes. What I like about this concept is that most of the assignments are completed in class. I like this because I always find that I have questions on homework assignments once I get home and by then it is usually too late to have my questions answered by the professor until the next class meeting. This can be problematic if the assignment is due that evening. A negative side of flipped classrooms is that it seems to be giving students more homework. Children in modern times are extremely busy with many extracurricular activities ranging from sports to musical interests. With all of these extracurricular activities, many students barely have time to complete two hours of homework, much less listen to an hour-long lecture from each of their many different course subjects. Neo K12 has a multitude of educational videos and other resources on different topics such as math, science, social studies, english, and history. http://www.neok12.com/

According to BusinessDictionary.com, professional development is defined as "Process of improving and increasing capabilities of staff through access to education and training opportunities in the workplace, through outside organization, or through watching others perform the job." As teachers, it is our duty to be as knowledgeable about the subjects that we are teaching as possible. If we have not mastered the information, it is impossible for us to convey it to students in a way that they can understand. This is why throughout the year teachers go to district-planned workshops. Professional development also helps teachers improve the way they teach, not just what they teach. Oftentimes, all that is needed to get through to a child is a new method of teaching the information or responding to a situation. We cannot be perfect but we can strive to improve ourselves and our ways every day.

One site that I think would be good to support professional development is Edutopia. Edutopia provides an array of videos and topics to help teachers ranging from social and emotional learning to technology integration techniques. There are also discussion boards where other educators can share their experiences and other articles that they have found to help each other. Edutopia's goal is to improve K-12 education by empowering educators and providing newly researched learning techniques. http://www.edutopia.org/

I already have a lot of experience with PowerPoint but this assignment helped me brush up on some old skills that I had forgotten. Also, I had never before recorded a PowerPoint so that was a new experience. The PowerPoint assignment took a lot longer than I expected. It took me about three hours to complete because it was very tedious and I am a bit of a perfectionist. I also had a lot of issues with Jing. The first few time I tried to use Jing it would not let me click through my PowerPoint and it was not showing my animations. I re-downloaded Jing and it FINALLY worked! In the future I would probably use a screen recording tool that allows me to record for longer that 5 minutes. It also took me a while to figure out how to create a master slide when I began the assignment. Prerecorded lectures would be very helpful for my future classroom. I could assign students who were absent to listen to the prerecorded lecture so that they would not fall behind. In the end, I was very happy with how my PowerPoint turned out. Check it out!