This video spoke to me. My innovation plan is to do a “soft flip” of my classroom. By “soft flip” what I mean is that instead of requiring the students to watch the video the night before, I give them the option to watch the lesson the night before or watching the video in the first half of class time while I work with those who’ve watched the lesson already. These videos are not my talking head, but instead the type of videos described as good learning tools in the video. I speak over the animated math and concepts presented so students can see and hear the math at the same time.
I’ve explained to the students the benefits of watching a short lesson at night, then using class time for discussion and independent practice -- thus saving study time at night and getting support when they have questions. The reason I did a soft flip was to address the needs of low-income, working students in my school, which accounts for over half of our students. We get out of school at 3 pm. Many of my students leave school in the afternoon to go to work until after 10 pm. This doesn’t leave much time (if any) for homework. Having the option to save time in the evenings should be a helpful change in how they learn.
What I’ve noticed…
Few students have taken advantage of having the lesson available the night before. We’ve been in school for three weeks now. The first week about a quarter of the students watched the video before class. As the school year progressed students stopped watching the lesson at home and came to school to watch the class discussion and just ask questions as they did the independent practice. The students really liked having the videos available for future use, but not for first-time instruction.
Students have reported that they tune out during the videos, even with questions inserted throughout. The irony is, they also tune out during class so they end up not getting the first-time instruction then, either, so they have to watch the videos to fill the gaps in their learning. The few students who continue to watch the lessons ahead of class are the self-motivated learners who tend to excel in class regardless of teacher support.
Something else I noticed is that students, when given the option to use paper or technology, will use paper almost every time. Our independent practice assignments are digital. Several students in each class have asked for assignments to be printed because they report they can’t focus when the assignment is on the computer.
Today, I gave the students a project to construct a sprinkler layout for their yard. I gave them links from sprinkler installation sites so they could learn what is needed to create a sprinkler layout. I gave them free rein on how they created their project. They could use a digital format or graph paper and a compass. Using google slides would have been incredibly easy and would have saved them time, but only 3 students even attempted to create their layout digitally - one of which was my own daughter. I asked several students when I saw them struggling to measure and use a compass why they were creating it on paper instead of digitally. They said they preferred paper. It was more comfortable for them.
We think of “kids these days” as digital natives - that kids just “know” how to use all technology and that they are more comfortable with it than paper and pencil. However, I have not found this to be true. The video pointed out that researchers thought if they could teach children how to program a turtle to move around a screen that it would increase their procedural reasoning skills. But, when students learned how to program the turtle to move all they learned was how to make the turtle move. Their procedural reasoning skills were unaffected.
This is exactly the case with my students. They don’t write notes in class, they text. They are quite comfortable with social media and texting apps for communicating with friends, but communicating academic pursuits digitally is outside of their comfort zone. Even though they are good at some things in a digital space, that doesn’t suggest that they are good at ALL things in a digital space - or that they are even comfortable in a digital space.
Technology was supposed to revolutionize education, but technology is just a tool, not the revolution. The revolution has to be in how we teach the kids. Giving students choice in how they communicate is key to them engaging with the learning and communicating what they’ve learned. What’s needed is not technology, but finding ways to motivate and encourage the students who aren't self-motivated to become self-motivated learners.
How do these observations help with my media projects?
Articles and media I find useful resonate with my own experiences, as the “This will revolutionize education” video did. If you discuss authentic ideas and experiences others will read your thoughts and engage. By sharing your knowledge and experiences you can inspire ideas in others. My hope is that they will then communicate the thoughts they have based on what resonated with them when reading my article.
References
This Will Revolutionize Education. (2014). YouTube. Retrieved September 11, 2021, from https://youtu.be/GEmuEWjHr5c.
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