Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

We flipped professional development and our teachers loved it

Learning cultures have no doubt shifted for students in most K-12 public schools. With new one-to-one initiatives, blended learning, online courses, project-based learning, one could argue that students are now more prepared than ever before for the 21st century. But what about teachers?

How are teachers learning to operate as professionals in the 21st century? Most teachers rely on traditional professional development methods like guidebooks on curriculum implementation or face-to-face. lecture-style settings, the gist of which is “Tell me something and maybe I will do it.” Other teachers, though, strive for more dynamic personalized learning opportunities (like the ones our students receive). So, how is it that we are preparing our students for the 21st century with a sense of urgency, but when it comes to quality learning for teachers, many school districts do not practice what they preach?

There are many theories of why we use words like collaboration, creativity, and communication with students, but we judge and evaluate our teachers with words like individual assessments, standards, and individual accountability. Maybe it is the fault of a “system” that places high expectations for teachers to teach 21st-century skills, but only be evaluated on 20th-century learning outcomes.…Read More

3 ways the flipped classroom leads to better subject mastery

Now that the buzz about flipped learning is calming and the novelty is wearing off, the time has come to dig a little deeper into the natural outcomes of flipping. Specifically, flipping can change the type of work students complete and the way in which class time will be used; it can modify the nature of assessment, and it can alter the way in which teachers will report student work.

First and foremost, we should define some terms. On the most basic level, flipped learning occurs when instructors make use of video lectures outside the class in order to bring what was being done in the homework space back into the classroom. In short: lecture at home, homework in class.

Much of the conversation about flipping has focused on using teacher-created video as an instructional tool, but the real benefit of flipping the classroom does not come from video. The true benefit comes from using videos as a teaching tool to deliver direct instruction at home so teachers are free to reinvent classroom time.…Read More

The end of FlipCon means big changes for flipped learning

If you’ve never attended a FlipCon, you may have missed your chance.

The seminal conference for the flipped learning movement, known formally as the Annual Flipped Learning Conference, is entering its ninth and final year as an in-person event, owing — somewhat fittingly — to dramatic shifts in online learning and communication, similar to the ones that birthed the movement in the first place.

FlipCon’s swan song, which starts on July 19 in suburban Dallas, is hardly the end of the movement or of the Flipped Learning Network, the group that has organized the event since 2012. “The conference has peaked,” explained Brian Bennett, an educator and chairman of the board for the Flipped Learning Network. “Annual conference attendance has dropped. But there’s still a lot of interest, especially international interest, in flipping.”…Read More