It's A Brave New World

This is year 3 of the flipped math class and I am starting to incorporate more flipped aspects to my history classes.

I love google forms.  One of the things I have struggled with is how to make sure that the students watch the videos.  Google forms is the answer to that question.  It takes a bit of time to set up a Google form for each video but it is going to be worth it.  I added a section to my website entitled Tonight's Video.  Now when students go to my website there will hopefully be no confusion over what video to watch.  After watching the video there is a form directly below it for the students to fill out.

My students are getting used to using the Google form and need to make sure to hit the submit button at the end.  I had 16 of 18 of my math students submit the form through correctly after showing them how to do access it in class.  It seems like they really will follow through more consistently with the form feedback coming to me.

In my World History and Non-Western Culture classes I decided to have the students preview the chapter before they start to read it.  I have included the PowerPoint video summary of the topic for the students to watch.  They then will again fill out the form at the bottom.  The form a a bit more generic than the math one and asks the following:  what were three things you learned,  what were two things you found that were interesting, and what is one question that you have on the top.

I can't wait for the feedback from the kids.  Hopefully it will really help them preview the info even before they need to start doing the reading.  

Over 16000 views and still picking up speed

The year is over half done and I have not updated yet.  Strange but true.  I have been having a lot of success with my math class in the second year run through.  I think that the students in the other math class that has another teacher is a bit jealous of the amount of homework.  Most of the views that I have are still from math and I have not made extra math videos this year.  Thankfully math does no change all that much in a year although I am wondering about how the Common Core standards are going to affect what things I need to teach.

I have put all of my PowerPoints for World History on YouTube.  It was hard to find the images and some of them are pretty basic summaries of the chapters.  However,  some of the kids are using them now.  With most of the chapters from the book now done,  I have about 30 World History videos up and running. 

I have doen some with my Non-Western Culture class but not enough.  I did more with a site called WallWisher to have the students post what they know and what they want to know about the different topics.  Shockingly many of them want to eat food from different countries.

In both of these classes I am just starting to use Google Forms to give the students practice tests to prepare them for the real thing.  So far the students seem to like it and appreciate the extra practice. 

I am greatly looking forward to starting up the kid directed wiki this semester.  We just upgraded our bandwidth and now it should be much easier to have the students all working on the different parts of the wiki with video, links, and images than it was before.  

The Year Is Done

Well this school year is over.  I got sidetracked after ICE and did not post as much as I should have.  Sorry about that.

This year has been quite a journey.  Made a lot of progress, and made a lot of mistakes.

I feel pretty good about next year already from my math curriculum videos.  I am going to have to set them up and refine them more,  but going into the year I have a big head start.

I wish I had started planning on being interesting instead of just methodical.  That would have made it more likely for the students to watch the videos.

One of my goals of the summer is to sit back and take it all in.  Once I do I will post some more of the things I wish I would have done differently and set up a plan for next year.

ICE in the rear view mirror

So it has been a little bit since I last posted.  It has been a little crazy in my personal life and then there was the prep I had to do for the ICE technology conference.It has been pretty exciting but draining.  

I planned to do a great job at the ICE conference for my presentation on "Flipping Classes Using Videos and Wikis".   Here is a link to the PowerPoint that I used. I was all set and even did a run through in the room I was presenting in before my session.   Everything looked great and I had about 90 people listening to me.  The first part went fine and then I opened a link and then nothing happened.  So I had to continually try to pivot from showing wiki that I could not show and going over PowerPoint slides that did not have the visuals to go along with them.  Just about everybody stayed for the full session and I still think that they got 3-4 good ideas from the presentation so I guess that it was OK.  But it could have been so much better.  Oh well live and learn and I should try to remember next time to prepare for an internet cataclysm by taking bunches of screen shots to at least show the info to the audience.

Update - Video count is now up to over 5000.  Averaging close to 1000 hits a month now and picking up speed.   I have fallen behind a couple of times on videos and had to have the kids do something else that night.  A lot of it had to do with technological issues that meant that it took longer than expected to record.
 

 

4000+

I am up to 87 videos on my YouTube account.  And right now I am at 4371 views.  I have been crazy busy with family stuff but still have found time to record all of my math lessons and a few history ones too.  It has been a lot easier to track who is watching the videos with the quizzes I am giving at the start of each class. The feedback has been good overall and when I was not able to go to work today due to water backing up in my basement,  I had the students watch the video from the previous night.  That way the substitute was able to review with them by just hitting a key on the computer.

In history class the students ask me frequently when they can work on the wiki page.  For both the 6th and 7th Graders we have been going to the computer lab once a week. Now that they have a handle on how to do it they are getting better and faster. I did have to remind the students about what constitutes an appropriate source to use when we were on the unit on Islam.  For the flags, one came up with a crescent and a swastika.  So we had a discussion about what is OK to use and what is not. 

I had a similar discussion with the students from my Non-Western Culture class and we got onto the topic of Wikipedia.  Now I love Wikipedia and use it almost every day but I know the flaws and I wanted to make sure that my students did too. I showed them the Colbert Report episode when he talked about the made up word wikiality to talk about how Wikipedia can be changed if enough people agree to a change even if it is counter-factual. Then I made the mistake of mentioning that a few years ago students had gone onto our school's Wikipedia page and altered it to say that they were notable alumni who had great made up careers at the age of 17.  And of course within hours a couple of my students figured out how to add all of their names to the school's page and recognize them all as Nobel Prize winners.  I chuckled inside but got them to change it before anyone saw.  I also had got to remind them that as moderator of the site I can see everything that they do on it.  They were kind of bummed when I told them that I knew about the messages they were sending each other through the wikispaces site. I enjoy teaching them but they can be a handful.

Techno-Tragedy

I love the new school and the room that I work in.  I there are only a couple of periods a week that I need to be out of it.  So when I sat down and started to record my math lessons for the day for the students to watch on Tuesday I had a plan.  Unfortunately it got derailed when my microphone did not work.  I tried it on a couple of different computers but now it is in the garbage.  So I did not record the lesson ahead of time for the first time this year.  Oh well I think that the students were fine.  We went over 3 lessons on Tuesday anyhow because it they were all about the basic definitions of geometry (rays,  lines, angles, and triangles).  It was pretty easy and we skipped over the one lesson that I do not like in the book on constructing angle and segment bisectors. I was kind of disappointed I had a great picture of Samuel Jackson to talk about when we went over planes.  It was from "Snakes on a Plane"  so I was pretty sure the kids would find it funny. I got a new set of headphones so I recorded today.  

The Sixth Graders started on the wiki process on Tuesday and worked on it today as well.  After giving the 7th Graders total freedom to create something on Japan,  I realized that the students needed a little more guidance.  Within the project set up, each has a page where they can put stuff.  They needed to find material on the four chapters that we are studying about the successors to the Roman Empire (Germans, Franks, Irish and Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings).  They seemed pretty into it.  I did have limit the amount of "Deadliest Warrior" video time in the computer lab.  It was fine providing it was on topic but once they started roaming and looking at other episodes I re-focused their attention on the topic.  Some of the students had set up the pages in the wrong section and I was able to easily change them to the right place by cutting and pasting.  They were all into the project but some got it quicker than others as expected.  Good start and a good way of reviewing some material that I have always found kind of boring.  We are probably going to go back again tomorrow and I will likely take the 7th Graders to so they can work on their Japan pages.  Two of my kids have been adding stuff in their spare time for fun.  Now that is buy in from the students. 
   

Halfway Home and All Hail the Power of the Wiki

           So the semester is over and I am currently working on grade reports.  I started working with the students on the wiki pages in my Non-Western Culture (7th Grade).  We are working on Japan and we went as a class down to the new computer lab to start talking about the wiki. I set up accounts for each of the students and it really was pretty easy once I added the word griffin at the end of their first name and the initial of their last name  (like: joesgriffin).  I had divided the students into project and showed them how to set up the wiki.  I showed them how to add videos, links, and pictures and to edit the text.  After going through it a couple of times I let them just start to play.  They leaped right in and immediately got started. The started grabbing things from all over the place.  I had divided the students into groups that I knew would work well together, but showed them how they need to save their work so they do not over write each others work. One group decided to focus on sushi,  another group on WW2, another group on the tsunami, and another one on ninjas. Some of the students just started putting additional random stuff they liked.  It was a beautiful, amorphous mess.  We only had about 10 minutes of them finding stuff and they did not want to leave when the bell rang.
           The next day they came in and wanted to go back down to use the computers again.  We could not use them but then something unexpected happened.  I have two students who want to use their computer all of the time in class.  Now that we have a better wireless system they are on them in class adding stuff to some of the lectures that I give whch is great. One of these students is very much a self starter who I really have to make sure to challenge,  the other student is smart but hard to motivate. So both of them came in and said that they had spent some of the rest of the day adding links to the wiki so they could share them with the other students.  It felt awesome seeing how excited they were and once I went on to see what they added it was great to see the results.  They needed to tweak things a little bit and I am going to have to suggest to them that they organize the page a little more clearly so it is easier to follow but it was great to have such a buy in from the students. 

   This coming week I am going to try to set up the wiki for the 6th graders.  I am once again going to not provide a lot of structure partially so they can play a little and get to know the system.  So they will be focusing on the groups that came after the Roman Empire including the Franks, Germans, Vikings, Irish and Anglo-Saxons.  We will have read the chapters from the book but this way they will hopefully be able to explore in a way that they are interested in and enthusiastic about.

In math,  if I look at the progress of the students I am happy.  The average grade for the second quarter was 85%.  I think that that is the highest average I have had overall.  I did stuff differently but my sense is that this has been a really good quarter. I am going to talk the students on Tuesday about what if any changes they think should be made to the class.

Grading myself

Thankfully at the school I am at we do not put a whole lot of focus on standardized testing.  In math, we go through the book about a chapter every 2 1/2 weeks, and the students take a test and maybe a couple of quizzes. But I do not really know how things are going compared to other students across the country.  I am looking forward to seeing how the students do on the Terra Nova tests that they will take but until then I have to go on what the students have done in past years  Clearly I have changed the way I teach and when the students took their semester math final focusing on the first six chapters of the book I was a little nervous on how they the students would do. Well they took their final and they significantly improved over last year.  I do not have the time right now to do a statistical analysis of the data but I am guessing that the average went up by about 10 points.  It was exciting to see the progress and that the concepts have stuck enough with the students.  We did a brief review the past three days in class but that was all and I did that the previous year as well.  I am just hoping that the gains are as dramatic on the Terra Nova tests they will take in spring.  That way maybe I can argue that other teachers might need to give this method of instruction a look. 

TIme for the Students to Step Up

Big week planned.  In math, this is the week students will take their semester final.  And in my World History (6th) and Non-Western Culture (7th) classes the students will be able to start adding to the wiki pages. 

In math class, I gave each students a copy of the tests that they have taken so far this year.  So they have a reminder of the stuff that they did not understand completely.  I then have gone over some of the more difficult problems.  I sent a long e-mail to parents recommending how their children should prepare and have reminded both parents and students that the videos are there if they have any questions.

In the two history classes, I figured out the way of adding permission for the students to be able to add to some of the pages without having to have their e-mails.  It was really pretty easy to do it trough the bulk user e-mail  feature on the wikispaces site.  I was able to use this because I have a K-12 education site.  That was pretty easy to get since all I had to do was e-mail the good people at wikispaces.  It should be an interesting experience this week when I start to introduce to them how they can easily add stuff to the pages.  I am going to start on this on Tuesday and have not decided yet whether to set clear parameters or to let the students just find stuff that interests them and that they think might interest others.  I am torn between these two feelings.  the 20th C. teacher is worried but the 21st C. teacher in me thinks the possibilities are worth the risk.

3000 views and counting

       Either yesterday or today my YouTube channel passed 3,000 views.  I created my last video for the first semester and there is now officially a video for each of the sections for the first 6 chapters in the book.  Now that I have figured out more bells and whistles like the calculator function I think it is going to go better for the rest of the year.  Few things are more annoying I am guessing than watching your teacher do long division.  It might be a good review but if you know how to do it then what a waste of time.  This also should cut down on the time for each video that involves calculations.
       I have started to add more images and am looking into adding other things the videos.  Now I feel like the videos that I did at the beginning of the year are pretty boring and lame. I still looked at the video counter every night and saw that the videos were not being viewed by every student each night.  So once I added the images I came up with a new idea of how to get the students to watch the videos more regularly.  Every day after a video I have started to give them a 1 or 2 question multiple choice quiz. It is something simple and visual  like what color was the Muppet who was  the waiter (it was Grover and he is blue) or what was the Lego set that I mentioned (the Death Star).  The answers are really easy and obvious and sometimes in the videos I even mention that you will want to remember this for tomorrow. The first day I did this I had not told the students and I was able to sense a shift in the class.  They realized that I did have a way of making sure they at least looked at the video.  So I am trying to find interesting and memorable images for the students to see for each video. 
        Now that I have one semester under my belt I feel like I am going to be able to really work at this and make the process even better for all involved.  

The Downside of YouTube

I was looking up videos today to explain an important battle that the Romans fought against the Gauls and had trouble finding something appropriate.  There are videos that are appropriate but I can't use them.  The problem is the suggested videos that come up on the side of the YouTube video if you go to that instead of using the embedded version on the site.  I was surprised to find what looked like inappropriate sexual content.  I can almost imagine the discussions I would be having with my supervisor if I had not caught it.  Unfortunately this is one of those areas that is hard deal with.  I want to have the kids be able to look up and see all the great stuff out there but worry about the muck that will get through.  I looked up videos on TeacherTube but there were a lot fewer options. I will have to work to figure out what the balance is on this.

The Undiscovered Country

The school has moved. This ought to be interesting. Everything is new and shiny and I am hoping to keep it that way. My room looks so different from the place I taught for 12 1/2 years. The students and parents have been helping move in a lot of different parts of the building. The one area that has been off-limits so far has been the gym. That will be unveiled on the first day of school. I imagine there are going to be a lot of ooohhs and aaahhhs at that point. The first days is going to be so exciting but is going to be a major change for everyone.

I excited overall but probably most excited about the new way that I am going to be able to use technology in the building. We are going to have a cart of chromebooks for check out for the upper school and middle school classes. I can see myself using those just about every day in my 7th Grade History class. Now that the Internet will be much more available with a server that is actually designed to have bunches of kids using the internet at the same time (not like the old building) I am planning on developing much more for the wiki for each of my history classes. I am still trying to figure out how to invite the kids to become members and will tackle that this week. My plan is for each of them to have a page to put their projects stuff on and then have topics for each of the major areas we are covering. They then will be able to add stuff. I spent one day looking for different media to add to my 6th Grade (Western Civilization) and 7th Grade (Non-Western Culture Focusing on Asia and Africa) pages and added probably 25 videos and another 2050 links just to show the students how it is done. Hopefully I will even be able to have the students blog about what we covered in the class on a weekly basis on the main part of my webpage.

I have some work to do on math so I can finish putting lessons up on the first half of the book. That should not take me too long since I only have a bout 3 more to go. Hopefully the kids remembered how to do percents over the break.

Starting to prepare for my talk at ICE on Flipping my classroom. I borrowed the IPad from the school and have started to experiment with using the Educreations and ShowMe apps. Still trying to figure it out but will over time. My gift to myself this year was a document camera. I am planning on using that to show how to record lessons using that system. I figure it is probably more likely for someone to have access to a document camera or an IPad than a Mobi board. I have a lot to do to plan for this but it should really keep me on my toes for the next couple of months.

No matter what these next few weeks are going to be some of the most exciting in my career.

The End is Here

All that work I put in during the summer was worth it but I have had to start recording lessons again and posting them to YouTube. I started last week and plan to do a few lessons over the weekend so I can stay ahead of the students. We are moving on to percents and I have started to put together some of the graphics that I will need to keep going. It was definitely worth it and it seems to have helped quite a few students and even parents to understand the math more effectively. One thing that I am looking forward to this year is the semester exam. I am going to give back to the students copies of their tests from the six chapters we will have covered and let them know which videos they should review before the test. Hopefully this targeted review will be better than the one I normally do that covers all of the material. Since we are moving to a new building with better internet capabilities the students should be able to all watch at the same time different lessons.

Just today I found out that my proposal for the ICE conference has been accepted. I am going to be presenting on flipping a classroom by using wikis and videos. I have until the start of March to put something together and I hope that I will as interesting as the people who I have learned from at ICE before. I am hoping to borrow an IPad from the school so I can see how to use it to develop lessons through that format. Exciting times and busy times.

Parents Have Their Say

So we have had our Autumn set of Parent Teacher Conferences. For the most part they were the usual check in with parents that have great kids and just want to do what they feel is right by meeting with their kid's teacher. They all went well and even though they are a long 3 days (yes that is right, three days) it really is great meeting with the parents.

This year, whenever I had a chance, I pulled out the computer and showed off the website wiki. I let the parents know that there is so much stuff out there that I wanted to share but did not have time that the wiki is where they should send their kids who were looking for more. Whenever I am watching something easy on TV I search for interesting stuff to put on line. So far the most popular stuff are the Deadliest Warrior videos that I have embedded for the different chapters. Only a month and a half and I will have the students looking for this stuff since we will be in the new building and there will not be the dreaded "buffereing" problem. I am going to love that new building and I think the kids will really get a kick out of sharing stuff.

One thing that has been taking me a lot of time recently has been digitally recording the work of the students so we can add it to the site. I have been spending a lot of time scanning in material so I have a record and I already have pictures taken of the larger projects. It will take some time but I think it will be worth it to put the kids work on the site.

For math the overwhelming response for the parents was extremely positive. Just about everyone was really happy and most said their kids were watching the videos regularly. For some of the students I need to remind them that they should look over the material when they get home if they are stuck on the nights homework but for the most part the kids are using it as a first preview. I am wondering how much the kids will actually need a math book if they have this resource. One parent said I could practice a little more on the videos and have higher production values but even they were impressed with the amount of work. I am at 1900 views and counting. So they must be doing someone some good out there since that is a lot more than I would have expected for my students.

Some of the World Is Watching

So it has been a while since I updated my blog. Been kind of busy with grade reports and did not have much time. I will get better.

So I am chugging along and looking forward to meeting with parents to see what they think so far. I asked the students after the first quarter of the year was over what they thought. So far they have been positive especially since they have not been getting much homework other than watching a 5-10 minute video. Most of the students have been able to finish the homework in class which is great. I have spent about 5 minutes going over a couple of problems on the board and then I have just been rotating around and checking work for the rest of the class. I have been able to catch a lot of the mistakes right away and addressed them with the students. There are still a few students who need to finish it up at night and stilll students who make mistakes but I have had a a lot more time to work with students individually.

One of the coolest moments so far this year was when one of my students pointed out that one of the videos that is on my YouTube account has been viewed over 300 times. We have not even gotten to that video yet in my math class. I had no idea what they were talking so I pulled up the account. So far this year I have had over 1600 views on the different videos. Whoa. That I did not expect. I have a bunch of videos that we have not gotten to in class that already have 50 views. I don't know who is watching but I have enough views that YouTube e-mailed me to see if they could pay me to put ads on my videos. I said no, but still very cool. It reminded me that I need to get back into the habit of uploading more videos. It will feel great when I have made it through the book. The kids even had some suggestions of how to make the videos more interesting by adding problems with things like Storm Troopers.

Another reason to love YouTube. The view counter

I guess videos are not magic bullets. The results are in from the first test in math and they are not all that surprising. The students who I expected to struggle struggled and the students who I expected to do well did well.

So what did I learn from this:

Well the videos only work if you pay attention to them and watch them closely. Some of the students were more behind than I thought at the start of the year. And I need to work on building up the students enthusiasm for the subject.

So how am I going to fix this, well I have started a three pronged approach.

First, I had a pretty frank discussion with the students about my expectations for them watching the videos. After checking the counter on YouTube I mentioned to the students that it was pretty clear some of the students were not watching. Unfortunately that sets up a problem because the students who are most invested in the class and are probably doing the best are watching the videos and already understand how to follow the procedures. So I either bore those students by going over the material again in class or have to work with 4-5 students who did not have the time to watch a 5 minute video. So I think I am going to start including a problem at the end of each lesson that the students have to complete that follows the steps outlined in the lessons. My hope is that then they will immediately get some practice and at the same time will be more invested since there is an actual grade for handing in the completed problem.

The second part of the plan is to help the students figure out what they are doing incorrectly and fix it. So five of the students who were not happy with the test scores will get a chance to re-take their test. But they first have to write out what they did that was incorrect in each problem they made a mistake on and then figure out the correct answer. Hopefully this will allow the students to think more about what they did incorrectly and then they might do better the next time around. I do not really care how long it takes them as long as they figure it out in the end.

To increase their enthusiasm in math I am going to totally ditch the regular material at least once a week and work on a problem that does not have a nice easy solution with a clear set of steps to follow. This week the students tried to figure out if they could run one lap around the athletic field at a faster pace than the marathoner who just set the record pace could run 26.2 miles. They could not but they had a pretty good time trying it out. We then had a really productive discussion on how to solve the problem.

So that is my plan moving forward in math. In history I need to get back to looking for material for the wiki to add. I could get lost with all the stuff out there but will eventually start to get the kids involved in it. At least when the kids handed their projects in to me this week I was able to take pictures so I can add them to the wiki for the class.

Judgement Day

Well it is here. The first test day in math class. I am going to be really interested in how this turns out. Hopefully all of the work and prep will be worth it. The kids started the test today but this first one always takes some extra time because it deals with decimal multiplication and division. One of the main things that I wanted to focus on this year with this group of students is computation. Overall it is a relative weakness for the class and I have worked to make it a habit in the class to show their work. They are already tired of one of the phrases that I use all year long: "Paper is cheap." I am going to ask them to rate how helpful the videos were and any advice they could give me to utilize them effectively. I am also going to honestly ask them what is the best way they think I could make sure that students watch the videos on the night that they are assigned so they can be prepared for class the next day.

In history, I am still in the starting blocks for selectively flipping the class. I am collecting videos and sources a bit at a time and putting them on my Wikis. The Non-Western Culture class that I teach 7th Graders in has been going very well but we have not had enough time in the computer lab to explore material yet. The students are working in groups to develop maps of Asia. They are using drywall paste on plywood and they have been really excited about the process. This is the last week we are working on it and they are finishing up painting the different regions and including other geographic forms like rivers. I felt it was important that they understand the impact of geography of the regions before we started on their culture and history. Also the first three chapters from the book do a survey of the geography of the regions so the project works well to build on that understanding. Once they are done with the project we are going to spend much more time collecting and sharing the resources out there with each other and the world.

First Parent Feedback

We had Miniature School and I talked and talked about the classes with all the parents. Since most of the students I had last year many of the parents already know the drill about how I have a website (http://www.roycemoreschool.org/teacher/montgomery/index.html) and try to put the information out there about my classes really clearly. So I was able to spend a lot of the time talking about the changes I made this year.

For my history classes, I emphasized the wiki for each class. I showed how it was set up and some of the things that I had uploaded to it so far. The parents seemed interested and pretty supportive. One thing I can not wait for is when our school moves to the new building in a couple of months. We then should have much more reliable web access and laptop carts for classes. I do not think that the parents quite got that I am expecting their kids to contribute to this page. I am going to start with the Seventh Graders and work with them first. I have had them the longest and know them pretty well. That class focuses on Non-Western Culture and I am finding lots of resources to start us off well.

The overall feed back from the math parents was positive. They appreciated the work that I put and said that there students are watching the videos that I have made at my YouTube account (andymoteach). They seemed pretty impressed that I had spent so much time preparing and that I have the first third of the year done and on-line. One thing that was a little bit irritating but helpful was the only criticism that I got. A parent commented to me that I could be more clear when I spoke during the videos. The frustrating part was that this was the parent who I asked to critique the videos after I did my first few. She said that she would but did not get back to me. Oh well, we all have busy lives but I just wish I had gotten her feedback. A couple of parents even said that they learned stuff from my videos where I was teaching math the traditional way with example after example. I really have been emphasizing that most nights the students may have a little homework and also a video or two to watch. I need buy in from the parents so that their kids are on top of this. The kids say it has been useful but I do not know yet how much they are getting out of it. Some are saying it is boring and others are saying it is just right. And I am pretty sure that some kids are not yet watching the videos regularly. I certainly am spending less time in class going over the material and that is allowing me to work more with the students that need the additional help. I am learning that this is a balancing act of how much work to assign and also a trust exercise on how much can I expect a bunch 13 year-olds to follow through when there is not a clear assessment after. For the students who need to the most work I am still trying to figure out how to have them pay the attention they need to. I might have them copy the problems down at so they can follow the steps more closely but I do not know. Their first quiz is on Tuesday so that should be interesting. I have a feeling that I am going to be meeting with a few of my students over lunch or after school the next couple of days.

Week One

My name is Andy Montgomery and this is my record of my attempt to start changing the way I teach by flipping my classroom.

My plan this year is to work towards flipping some of my classes regularly. I believe that this will allow me to do more interesting things during class instead of lecturing and managing to make sure that the students understood the lecture.

I teach in an independent, private school and am lucky enough to be able to try new things without having to ask too many people for permission. I teach four classes of history and one class of math. I have been teaching the same classes for most of the past thirteen years and while I always included new ideas and material I felt that this was the year I should really shake things up and get the students more involved.

I started this summer focusing on my math class and started to make my own series of videos that mimic Khan Academy. The main difference is that mine and clearly focusing on the lessons that we are covering through the textbook instead of having to pick and choose from Khan. I worked using a Mobi board and started to put lessons on a YouTube account (andymoteach if you are interested). It took quite a bit of my summer but I was able to create videos for a about a third of the way through the year. I will continue to build on this whenever I can. I planned on having the students watch the videos at home and do most of the work in class. As they got used to it and we got past the mundane process of decimal addition through division I hope to start to do more explorations in class and have the students watch the videos at home. I will keep you posted on how well this works and the adjustments I will have to make.

In my other classes I decided to start setting up wikis so I could post interesting material that supplements the textbook. My hope is that my students will soon start to scour the Web and find additional resources that we can then use to expand our understanding of the material.

So those are my goals and this is my record of what worked and what did not for the year. Hopefully others that follow down this path will avoid the many mistakes that I am sure to make and be able to feel like they have someone else out there that was as daunted by the challenge but bravely tried to do something different to help their students.