In 2010, when Principal Greg Green decided to “flip” one class in his failing high school, it was considered a radical idea.
Flipping a classroom essentially turns the typical school day on its head. Students receive video lessons online at home and do their homework during class, freeing up time so they can receive more one-on-one help from their teacher.
While other schools had adopted the flipped model with some success, Green was cautious. He wanted to see the results for himself. So he ran a 20-week-long trial at Clintondale High School in Clinton, Mich., which at the time, ranked in the lowest 5 percent of Michigan’s high schools. The test run applied the flipped classroom teaching model to a civics class that included 13 failing kids and compared it with another class using a traditional teaching method.
Green says that the results were staggering. “The at-risk class actually outperformed the traditional class using the same teacher, the same materials — just a little different method.”
The next year, Green flipped every class at Clintondale, making it the first school in the nation to do so. Since then, the school has seen an increase in attendance, college acceptance and a fairly significant reduction in failure rates — from 35 percent to 10 percent in just two years.
Tag: online learning
Sorry Kids: The Rise of Virtual Learning Might Mean the End of Snow Days
For any kid who has experienced the pure joy of waking up on a school day only to discover that it’s been canceled due to inclement weather, we hope you enjoy those memories. Because traditional snow days full of sleeping in, sledding, movie marathons and hot chocolate are over. This winter has been one of the snowiest and coldest on record for many parts of the country, forcing schools to shut their doors for days at a time. In the past, teachers would try to make up for lost time by squeezing multiple lesson plans into one day. But now teachers can connect with their students online by uploading digital lessons, holding classroom discussions and even allowing students to turn in homework assignments via email. In other words, much to students’ dismay, snow days are no excuse for a break anymore.
MORE: This Controversial Teaching Method Is Transforming Classrooms
In Chicago, which was slammed by the polar vortex earlier this year, “tele-schooling” is gaining popularity among teachers who say that missed class time can be a big problem in an era of high-stakes testing. As some of the more affluent school districts issue students laptops or tablets, weather is no longer a barrier for learning. “I told my kids, ‘If we’re not here, we can’t fall behind,'” Steve Kurfess, a math teacher at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, told the Chicago Tribune. “Especially with math, every day is taken into account.” Kurfess has embraced online learning to bridge the gap between school attendance and required coursework. He’s uploaded all of his lessons — about 600 or 700 videos — so students can access them at any time. Save for tests and quizzes, his entire class is paperless. After the school was closed for two days earlier this month, Kurfess said that 98 percent of his students completed the required coursework. “I didn’t miss a day,” he said.
MORE: The Next Frontier in Online Education Isn’t What You’d Expect
As the idea of virtual classrooms continues to expand, Ohio has put a law on the books that allows schools to make up as many as three snow days a year online. This way, schools don’t have to extend the school year into summer to make up for lost time. While the plan was piloted a few years back in the Mississinawa Valley School District, a small, rural community near the Indiana border, it wasn’t until last month that teachers used their “e-days” as they call them. So far, the feedback has been positive, with more than 150 districts in the state having submitted “Blizzard Bags” plans, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
Of course, there are still some technological issues to mitigate before virtual learning becomes the new normal. Most importantly, officials are looking for ways to provide equal access to computers, tablets and Internet for students in less affluent school districts. Some are even partnering with organizations to provide free Internet access in areas where students live. Wifi-enabled school buses might soon become a reality, as well. But as access to technology and Internet grows more and more abundant, snow days as we know (and love) them may become a relic of days past.
ALSO: The Minerva Project: On Online College to Rival the Ivy League
How Tweeting Can Help With Teaching
If you can’t beat Generation Smartphone, join them. Many media-savvy teachers have found that using Twitter can actually help enrich their lectures. Take Chris Lazarski’s public policy class at Wauwatosa West High School in Milwaukee. As the AP reports, the teacher uses Twitter to promote dialogue about current events. For example, after a lecture on zero-tolerance policies in high school, he had his students tweet their reactions. Some students tweeted at industry experts, others retweeted articles that shared their opinions.
You might buck at the idea of giving students more time with their phones, but if used correctly, social media can have a whole host of benefits. Students learn the responsibilities of having an online presence at an early age. The #hashtag feature means that anyone in the world with a Twitter handle can join in on the discussion. Twitter can also help shy students who don’t like raising their hands in class find their voice, 140 characters at a time.
Lazarski takes part in the “Do Now” program from San Francisco-based TV station KQED that features weekly Twitter-friendly topics such as elections, politics, and international news. The growing program is now used by more than 120 teachers in California, Oregon, Kentucky, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia and New York.
MORE: Infographic: How Social Media Is Used For Social Good
The Next Frontier in Online Education Isn’t What You’d Expect
For anyone who wants to learn in their living room, but doesn’t want to sign up for a whole semester of online classes, video workshops may be the answer. San Francisco-based CreativeLive, for example, broadcasts live educational workshops taught by experts, for free. There are classes in subjects like photography, interior design, scrapbooking, music production and marketing. The seminars are instructive, but they won’t pass for rigorous coursework. Think of it “more as a replacement for enrichment classes at a community college than high-level classes at a university,” writes Fast Company‘s Ariel Schwartz.
CreativeLive has more than 500 classes in its collection and more than 2 million viewers. Now it’s going bigger: the company will launch five separate round-the-clock channels broadcasting both live and repeat programming, just like a TV network — only better because there won’t be any commercials. The move lets CreativeLive tailor its content to specific audiences (like say, in China) or by season (more wedding planning classes in the spring). The idea isn’t unique, but judging from investor interest in companies like CreativeLive, it’s growing fast.
Can Software Close the SAT Achievement Gap?
Dan Driscoll started City Football Club, a nonprofit soccer program for middle and high school students in Washington, DC. To play soccer, students had to participate in SAT tutoring and college counseling. Driscoll found that his tutoring techniques helped his students gain an average of 100 points on each of the three sections of the SAT. And while many of his students were heading to college, he wanted to find a way to give the same opportunity to other students. So he started Prepify, a cloud-based service that teaches students to take the SAT and ACT. The program adapts to students’ progress—for example, if a student misses a question, an easier version of a similar question will pop up next—and could close the gap in test scores between low-income students and their affluent peers. Prepify is a for-profit company, and Driscoll plans to reinvest all profits back into the software to create tools like a progress dashboard to connect low-income students with top universities.
MORE: The Bay Area groups that are trying to close the STEM gap
How an Internet Connection Revolutionized Music Class for Students in Rural Minnesota
An online project is connecting rural Minnesota schools’ bands and orchestras with the state’s oldest music education institution. Professional musicians from the nonprofit MacPhail Center for Music teach low-income students via video instruction. Through the partnership, small-town students get access to amazing learning opportunities that their schools don’t have other ways to offer. The project started in 2011 with one school, and has now expanded to 17 districts and 1,500 students. Teachers at the rural schools feel more supported, and say that the project gives student access to professionals who would normally only be able to provide lessons and instruction to students living in a city.
This School Cut Textbook Costs from $600 to $150 With One Innovation
At Archbishop Stepinac High School in upstate New York, almost every textbook is now digital and accessible from students’ laptops and tablets. The cost of books has dropped from $600 to $150, and all of the digital textbooks are kept in cloud storage. And more than just migrating traditional content onto a screen, the digital textbooks offer a much richer learning experience. The material is supplemented with videos, assessments, virtual labs and blogging capability. Students can also highlight passages or write notes in the margins without damaging a book for other students. Teachers say that student learning has improved, and homework with the digital texts is more productive, so they can engage students in more discussion and analysis in class. As tablets and computers become less expensive and more online lessons and books become available, either through publishers or through platforms that teachers find or create themselves, more students will benefit from digital textbooks and materials. “It’s all great,” said one Stepinac junior. “As long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t go down.”
Why Minecraft is the Learning Tool of the Future
Minecraft is a game that allows students to complete adventures, build worlds, talk to their friends and learn about digital citizenship. And while schools don’t usually have trouble getting kids interested in video games, they are finding it challenging to teach students about internet ethics and online safety at an early-enough age. But Minecraft is a great tool to teach digital citizenship, and enables students to learn about communication, collaboration and critical thinking. Check out this video to learn about the game and how teachers are using it.
This Teacher Made a Viral Photo to Teach About Internet Safety
Here’s a great example of an effective lesson. This middle school teacher took to the Internet to teach her students about online security and privacy. This photo has been shared tens of thousands of times and received hundreds of thousands of likes on Facebook. The lesson in Internet safety is especially relevant right now as there are 5.6 million users in violation of Facebook’s minimum age of 13, and kids are becoming more and more active on internet-connected devices from phones to tablets to computers.