The snow has not been friendly to me recently.  It has be wreaking havoc on my teaching plans as well as my blog posts!  I’ve been waiting to write this particular post until I had a bit of time with my students to experience the flipped mastery.  I also wanted to be able to talk about my experience with Digital Learning Day.  Mine was delayed due to one in a series of blizzards we’ve had this month.  Now, finally, everything has fallen into place!






     As I mentioned in my previous two posts, I began experimenting with flipped learning almost a year ago.  I have researched, conducted trials, solicited student feedback, researched again, and went back to the drawing board.  
     As I started this school year, I still believed that the flipped mastery model would not work for me and my students.  I teach inclusion classes and I didn’t think that the students could manage working their way through unit objectives on their own, I didn’t think that my students would have enough support to be successful, and I didn’t think that my students would be able to learn everything that they need to enable them to pass the Regents exam in June.
     But assigning video notes for homework wasn’t working because too many of my students weren’t watching them. They weren’t doing the regular homework either.  The students did feel like the videos were beneficial and they loved that they could watch them at their own pace during the times that I had them watch them in class.  I loved how much time I was able to free up to do other activities and to work on skill building.
     I came to the conclusion that if I wanted have my cake and eat it too, I would need to give up my reservations and try flipped mastery.  Because I was still a little nervous about the prospect of trying something so radically different, I decided to only use a flipped mastery model for my Psychology classes.  Psychology is a semester course, an elective, and does not have a Regents exam.  I figured that I couldn’t screw things up too badly!

These are the things that I use to produce flipped videos and to enable my students to view them.

• Logitech Labtec Desktop Microphone 600 (when I purchased this it was $15) This was my original mic and it served me well.
  
• Yeti USB Microphone (currently $98) I got this for Christmas from my husband.  It’s a real upgrade in sound from my original microphone but not truly necessary to be able to produce screencasts.  It sure is nice though!
  
• PowerPoint
  
• Screencast-o-matic Free or $15 for a year.  Uploads to youtube or screencast-o-matic or even better save to your computer
  
• YouTube- my channel 
  
• Weebly-  My website to post links to videos
  
• Schoology - Starting in October our school district now uses this as our LMS and I now post videos here.  I download my screencasts as MP4s from Screencast-o-matic and then upload to Schoology. Then I don’t have to worry about them being blocked at school!
  

What's on my list to get next:

• Camtasia
  
• A video camera to attempt green screen recordings!

     Flipped mastery has begun for the second semester of my Psychology classes.  We have just begun our second unit.  I have to say that I am quite pleased and that my students are happy also.  Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

• I learned the students names a lot quicker than I normally do
  
• Some students like choice and independence while others are completely confused by it (this has been improving daily)
  
• Some students shine that in other classes just put their heads down 
  
• In my foray into student blogging, I have learned that I need to teach writing and plagiarism (these were not topics that were big in this type of class previously) 
  
• There is a learning curve for both my students and me with this very different method of learning.  The way that I sell it to the students is that we will be working as a partnership.  So far the feedback from the students is that they are feeling empowered.  
  

     After visiting Tom Driscoll’s classes (@Mr_Driscoll) and talking to his students, I feel like I have made the right decision to pursue this new method of teaching.  His students were regular students, just like mine, and they were independent, knowledgeable, engaged, and learning!  I gained quite a few tips to smooth out some of the bumps that I have encountered so far and will be putting them into place immediately.  He also gave me a lot to think about for the future, particularly the addition of a gamification element to the course.  My co-teacher was so excited after learning about how successful Tom Driscoll has been in flipping his classes that he wants to get started with flipped mastery prior to the end of this school year rather than waiting for the fall as we had talked about previously!  I have to say that I’m extremely excited as well!!!
     I will be cohosting a Twitter chat for Psychology teachers with Melissa Schaefer (@MT_schaef) on March 12th at 9pm EST if you’d like to join in discussing our experiences with Flipped Learning.  Additionally, I will be presenting at the New York State Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Albany (March 27-29) about screencasting and curating videos for a flipped class.  I will also be posting updates here as the semester progresses to give you the play-by-play of what is working and what I have needed to modify.  

As I mentioned at the start of my last post, I am a planner and a list maker.  I like the research process and seeing all of the possibilities.  My husband and I are notorious for our vacation planning down to which restaurants we’re going to try out while we’re in a new place.  The problem is that sometimes you can become crippled with the planning process.  Sometimes, you just have to jump in and try something and make changes as you go.  I’ve worked hard to make my path towards completely flipping all of my classes equal parts research, application, and reflection.  If you’re in the research portion of your journey, here are some of the resources I have found useful along the way.

Books:

• Flip Your Classroom: Reach every student in every class every day-  I think this is my 3rd time mentioning this book!
  
• Flipping 2.0 - Very, very highly recommend.  Extremely practical advice and real world applications.
  
• *I plan on getting this as soon as it’s available in June 2014- Flipped Learning: Gateway to Student Engagement
  

Twitter Chats:

• #flipclass (Mondays at 8pm EST)
• #sschat (Mondays at 7pm EST)
• #psychat (Wednesdays at 9pm EST)
  

EdCampNYC

• If you haven’t been to an EdCamp, do yourself a favor and check one out!  I’ve been to EdCampNYC twice and it has changed my educational life!
  

Websites/Apps:

• Flipped Learning Network and Ning 
  
• EducatorsTechnology.com
  
• Edudemic  
  
• Zite- With this app you can make your own categories and Zite will bring you information from around the web and then cater it to your needs/likes.  I use this app almost daily to keep up with what’s new in education.
  

Blogs:

• Flipped History- This is the blog that is guiding me most in the mastery portion of my flipped adventure. 
  
• Flipping My Spanish Classroom  
  
• Flipping with Kirch 
  
• US History Educator Blog- The focus of this blog isn't flipping but it is sometimes discussed as well as educational technology.
• Not Another History Teacher- An awesome educational technology blog with a focus on social studies.
  
• I recently just stumbled upon the following: A Flipped Approach and Student Centered History 
  

LMS Groups

• Schoology Flipped Classrooms
  
• Edmodo Flipping Your Classroom 
  

YouTube:

• Hip Hughes History  
  
• Katie Gimbar’s Flipped Classroom FAQ   
  

Hopefully some of these resources will be useful to you also as you make your own journey towards a flipped classroom.  Stay tuned for my final installment of my flipping story---how I decided to move to a flipped mastery model for my Psychology classes!

I’m a goal setter and a list maker.  Last spring, I set the goal to transition my classes to a flipped learning model.  This week I was finally able to implement a full, flipped mastery model to my two psychology classes.  How it will work, how much my students will learn and enjoy it, and what changes will need to be made all remain to be seen.  For now, I can tell you the process which led me to where I am today.

The Beginning:

It started with Twitter and Twitter Chats.  The two I engaged in the most last year were #sschat and #psychat.  People mentioned flipped learning and I was intrigued and decided to read up on it.  My research started online and then moved to the book Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams.  Initially, I found the book very useful but I decided that Flipped Mastery would not be something that I could do with my students.  I didn’t see how I could get through the curriculum or how they would be able to achieve mastery.  I also felt like it would mean me giving up on the instructional side of my teaching which is something that I love and feel that I am good at.

After a bunch of reading and research I dipped my toe in to flipping in April of 2013.  I figured that I couldn’t mess up too much at that point in the school year (we end in June) and I did some in class flips for my US History and Psychology classes.  I made sure to get a lot of feedback from my students along the way.  It helped me to fine tune my videos (shorter!) and to give me more goals to set in the future (put me in the videos, maybe even green screen).

Since it was the end of the school year, I didn’t get the opportunity to assign too many flipped homework assignments.  I did, however, make 13 Regents review videos for my US History students.  When I asked them just before the exam what were the most effective review methods for them, my review methods were highly rated.

Making Adjustments:

As the new school year started this fall, I had the goal of flipping one lesson each week for both US History and Psychology classes. 

This did not work out as planned for US History.  The students weren’t watching the videos and thus were not learning the material.  Instead of giving up entirely, I made videos as test reviews and for each vocabulary list I assigned to better explain the material and to help the students to review for our vocabulary quizzes.  The students have been making good use of these resources but I still want to get back to my initial goal of flipping more of the class instruction. 

In my psychology classes, my goal has been working out pretty well! I didn’t flip every single week but I did create flipped lessons regularly.  To increase students’ likelihood of watching the videos I did several things.

1. Put the videos on flash drives and DVDs for the students with limited internet access.
   
2. Posted the videos on both YouTube (with the links on my website) and Schoology (which is not blocked at school).
3. Gave the students ample opportunity to watch the videos; not just one or two nights.  I assigned the videos on Monday and made them due on Friday.
   
4. On the Friday when the videos were due, I held class in the computer lab.  I assigned fun activities for the class like taking personality tests or completing memory exercises.  The students loved them!  The students who hadn’t watched the flipped video for the week, however, had to watch the video prior to being able to do the fun activity.  
   

Using these methods, all students watched the videos whether at home or during class time.  Class time was freed up to do more engaging activities, have more discussions, and delve deeper into the material.  I was quite pleased and so were my students.

In my next post, I’ll discuss what technology I have used to flip my classes and some of the specific places where I have learned about how to flip effectively.  In a third post I’ll let you know the steps I’ve taken to move from a weekly flipped lesson to a fully flipped mastery model for my psychology classes.  Stay tuned!