FlipCon Australia 2015

Jon, myself and Aaron...

Hello fellow flippers,

  

Last year I was honored to be a presenter at two significant conferences.

The first was the Australian Institute of independent schools conference – WILL IT BLEND.

This was a conference that brought together what was current in educational technology in 2015.

My contribution to this conference was two separate presentations. Both concerned with flipping the classroom. I co-presented with Ryan Gill of Masada College, who brought his expertise at flipping the classroom in a secondary context to our group presentation.

Our presentation went well. On day one we had 15 or so people in the room - whereas on day two we had 45. People were interested in what we had to share and had spread the word. I look forward to presenting again at this conference this year.

As a presenter, I was able to view other presentations. I was most struck by the Makey Makey presentation and device. This little device really does hold some concrete use for achieving science and technology outcomes in our classrooms in a thoroughly engaging manner.

I was also invited to attend the first FlipCon Australia conference. I presented two workshops at this conference.

1)Flipping the Primary Classroom

2)Flipping the Classroom: K to 12 Leadership

Both presentations received positive feedback from the attendees, the second in particular. In this second presentation I focused on my research of the literature concerning the efficacy of the flip classroom approach and student satisfaction rates in a K – 12 context.

I also was part of an interview panel for primary teachers.

At this conference I was able to work directly under John Bergman and Aaron Sams, the two leaders in the flip classroom educational movement.

These two men were as inspiring in real life as they are in their book - and I hope to work with them more.

There were a couple of key thoughts that arose from this conference.

Aaron Sams was brilliant in his observation that at some point in the future the flip classroom will entirely fade away. We will not even refer to it. In fact the flip classroom will become as ubiquitous as pencils. It will just be a part of the educational culture that we are in.

Futher to this, the observations from Sams and Bergman regarding the inexorable flow on effect from flipping your classroom classroom are worth noting.

When one is able to provide content 100% flipped manner, one can then look at your assessments as well and seek to provide those in a flipped manner – and ultimately when one has mastered this one can then extend this differentiation to modifying the assessment in such a way that the key elements of the topic are still being assessed but are been assessed in such a way that suits the learner.

For example a student who labors with chemistry but is highly interested in metalwork - can be assessed (as much as is reasonable) on his chemical understanding of the metalwork.

Or a student who loves his soccer, but labors with physics, can be assessed on his astrophysical understanding of what is happening with regards to angles and forces to a soccer ball in extended game of soccer.

This has given this some thought to how I would also mean like to assess in my own classroom - and of course is concerned with principles of UDL.

Further to this I have been challenged to up the engagement quality of some of my screen card presentations. I must thank Jeremy LeCormu for this.

Whilst I still hold that a satisfactory screen cast is perhaps better than the best live teacher lesson… I have been inspired to increase the engagement level of my own screen casting technique. I think that Jeremy does this very well, and I have sought to emulate his style here.

It is my aim to shortly begin research on the efficacy of the flipped classroom in a primary context. Currently there is an international dearth of any such research available in a primary or secondary level (particularly the former).

 I hope to begin this under and collaborating with the University of Wollongong, using my own class and some objective testing results that I have collected along the way. This will take the form of a comparative study.

If you would like me to share in flipping the classroom with you, or your staff, I would be very happy to do so. Contact details are available on this site,  or below.

Google: mattburnsflipyourclassroom

T: @BurnsMatthew

M: 0411 824 123

E: mattburns1976@gmail.com