Somersaulting the Classroom at #DENSI2012

Tim Childers discussed how to somersault your classroom.  He began his presentation letting us know that somersalting the classroom can be a  more comfortable way to get ‘flipping’ into their classrooms.  Somersalting allows you to select 1 thing to change and improve student engagement, parent interaction and student achievement.

The concept behind ‘flipping’ involves students watching videos or reading notes at home and then coming to school to do the work.  Flipping allows teachers and students to work together on the work products after students have completed the theory portion of the assignments at home.

Tim encouraged us to ‘somersault’ some of our lessons by creating screenshots/screencasts or teaching videos showing the teacher completing a lesson.  His session focused on showing us how to use interactive white boards, flipcams, iPhones, Jing, Knovio and Screencast-O-Matic. to create video content that can be shared with students, their parents, administration and teachers.  Tim also pointed out that Edmodo is a good place to house videos.  If you missed his session, he has started a group on Edmodo.  Look for his post for today, Monday, and you should see it.

Tim’s session left me THOUGHTFUL.

Now I am trying to find ways to be creative and somersault my classes.  I now have an AP class and I want to have them do readings at home to free up class time for the LEARNING and CONNECTING that happens after we get the pedagogical tasks out of the way.