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Permalink Reply by Leslie Raffelson on April 7, 2011 at 10:32am

Things I need to learn before I flip my class completely:

Mastery - how do I organize a course into mastery based when I change it so much every year? Is it worth flipping if I only use it once? When using technology - it changes so quickly - example being I use Adobe Photoshop and we just upgraded to photoshop cs5 this year. I will probably have it for several years before we get a chance to upgrade again, but what about those smaller apps that you change frequently? It isn't worth developing your own stuff for if you can find other things available. 

Projects - I work a lot with projects and because it is art (and not 'crafts') each students work ends up being so different. I hate putting restrictions on what it must look like or be if they decide to be creative and wander a different direction with it. In the projects we do, I need to define what those basic structures are - or maybe let the students create those frameworks throughout the year as we work and let that be the mastery piece. Maybe my project work is more of a flipped course than I think it is because I don't really teach kids as a group during the spring when we are really more into the projects they all want to work on. I should just focus on the fall when we do more structured learning. 

 

Resources - I love www.lynda.com and would like to have students have their own accounts. I wish they had a classroom type of setup. I need to look into that. Photoshop user is another one that I love and may need to renew. For Art, what videos are available to help with the basic art principles that I start the year with. Basic drawing, rule of thirds, etc. I think Art Snacks? ning was one with videos on some pencil drawings, pen drawings, etc. Over the summer I need to gather those and embed those into the lessons I have. 

 

Online/Blended - I really like the blended learning environment for students to keep organized and know where they are, where they need to go and what they need to do. It allows for my class to extend beyond the 4 walls/45 minutes we have together. We have a school hosted website, but I am not in love with it. I have a class created on www.coursesites.com by blackboard and think that they may have more flexiable options for online quizzes/ tests and one thing I really want is the threaded discussion board. I need to sped time exploring that environment and see if it is what I need. I have used Google Sites in the past, but I would really love the formal feel that they are going to get in college, but not sure if it is worth the muckyness of trying to figure it all out if the only thing I will get from coursesites is a nice threaded discussion forum. I think Google just came out with a new piece in docs that has some commenting that may work like a threaded discussion. If so, most of what I need can be done in docs/sites/forms for my class. 

 

Maybe my class doesn't have to be as organized and structured on paper as I think it needs to be by the end of the summer. 

 

Yes.. I am rambling and thinking "out loud" here but it helps me get my mind around what I have, what I am doing and where I want to go and if that helps someone else, awesome.