November 19, 2013 - Todd Nesloney's Webinar

For the November 19 class, I watched Todd Nesloney’s webinar from 05. 07. 2013 about flipped classroom.

Todd explained it’s not ALL about the videos.  He mentioned that videos are only about 10% of his flipped classroom.  When he puts together his videos, he tries to make his videos an average of 6 minutes long, and he usually only puts in one example.  He leaves it up to the students to research more examples if they need it.

One important tip I learned is that he does a few videos at a time.  He will do three videos at a time, so he’s not making videos all the time.  He said he doesn’t do them at home, he’ll come into work an hour early and work on his videos (I’m not sure why he does this, because personally, I’d rather be at home and do it.)

Todd covered a lot of bases in his webinar, but if I could ask him one question, I would like to ask Todd if he’s ever encountered a parent who is opposed to this method of teaching, and if so, how did he deal with opposition from the parent.

After watching Todd’s webinar I think I’d be more inclined to use the flipped classroom teaching method. I know that schools want to make sure teachers are inventing new methods of teaching, and based on Todd’s positive outlook on flipped classroom, I think I would integrate it into my classroom.  I wouldn’t want to completely do a flipped classroom, but I think it would be great to implement it a few times a month to keep things fresh and make things interesting for the students.

November 12, 2013 - Sophia, Flipped Learning

In today's class we logged onto a site called Sophia and learned about flipped learning in the classroom.  Flipped learning is a form of teaching in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and what used to be homework is now done in class with teacher helping.
Some common criticisms that were discussed in class were:

• Kids do not want to sit at home watching boring video lectures on the web after being in school all day.
• Some kids do not have internet access at home.
• How do I even know if kids are watching the videos?  If they don't watch videos, don't I just end up reteaching the material in class anyway?

For next class we will be constructing our own flipped video and a sample flipped classroom on Sophia. 

November 5, 2013 - Prezi

This week's class we learned about Prezi and how to do various effects.  Prezi is a lot like Powerpoint, but it's more seamless and fluid.  It's cloud-based presentation software for presenting projects. Where Powerpoint is more structured and has a slide-like appearance, Prezi is more creative and allows content to become exciting and interesting.

I was excited to learn about Prezi because I know several jobs I've applied for in the past asked if applicants were familiar with Prezi.  So this is something I know will be used in the future.

October 22, 2013 - Horizon Report, Gamification, Presentations

In our October 22 class, we did class presentations on the Horizon Report, finished up Gamification, and did a short video with a group on Creative Commons.  We did our Creative Commons video on the different types of licenses through Creative Commons.  I enjoyed this activity because the video had to be short, which made it easy to decide which material we wanted to incorporate, and also the software we used to create the video was fairly user friendly.

Professor Ross mentioned this week we will be learning Prezi, which I'm looking forward to learning about because I've applied for jobs in the past and I know that businesses are looking for people who are familiar with this application.