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Flipped classroom discussed at Harvard Law

The flipped classroom seems to be the teaching technique du jour. Every few days I see a new mention of it in the media. This weekend the Washington Post carried an article. From "The flip: Classwork at home, homework in class":

Today, the 48-year-old [Jonathan Bergmann] helps teachers around the world “flip” their classrooms. Last week, he was at Harvard Law School talking about the virtues of flipping. A book he and Sams wrote, “Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day,” is coming out in June, and Bergmann is planning the fifth annual conference on Flipped Learning this summer.

...

Q. What exactly is a flipped classroom?

In the simplest form, basically, it’s this: What’s normally done in class, the direct instruction piece, the lecture, is done now at home with videos. And in class, you, the teacher, help students as they do what they would normally do at home.

...

Q. This makes the role of the teacher at least as important as ever. Right?

The flip makes the teacher more important. The teacher is not the disseminator of knowledge but the chief facilitator and the chief learner.

Have you observed or used the technique?

Busting those pesky and enduring myths about learning styles

If you are interested in what's fact and what's not in the arena of learning styles, read what education guru—and author of Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, a book I have recommended at least 100 times—Daniel Willingham has written. Excerpt from his blog post on the topic:

When I was first getting into education research (about 2005) I was surprised to find how many people--teachers and others--assumed that there was scientific evidence supporting learning styles. In 2009 I made a 7 minute video arguing that this evidence is lacking. (You can see the video here). In 2010, with Cedar Riener, I wrote an article for Change magazine on the topic.

Mostly because of the video I get a lot of emails about learning styles, so I though it might be useful to post Frequently Asked Questions, along with my answers.

Click to read the rest.

Note: Click to read a past post about learning styles which links to other posts I have written on the topic.

 

 

 

 

How to use your iPad to teach and make presentations

Seeing that one of the bar exam preparation providers uses iPads in its training (also and this), I was reminded of the possible utility of the tablet for learning. Except I don't know how to use the device for anything besides e-mail, Sudoku, and reading books. My knowledge gap is large, very large.

What to do? My first answers to closing a knowledge gap are to talk with an expert or, more frequently, find a book. Not knowing an expert, I went on a book search. Google up!

After a search, I ordered this book and will write more later about what I learn.

Resource for those interested in the flipped classroom: An ongoing collection of posts from around the blogosphere

Dr. Jackie Gerstein stays on top of the blog posts being written about the flipped classroom, and posts them for you on her Scoop.it. Click to see the collection of flipped-classroom posts. Her tagline at the collection:

Resources for the flipped classroom: Students review content for homework, class time is for experiential activities, questions, and rich discourse.

Other resources (a list to which I will add):

• "Flipped learning: A response to five common criticisms" (eSchool News)
• "What Everybody Should Know About the Flipped Classroom" (online learning exchange)
• Check back for more

Attendees are not paying attention to your talk or training program: What should you do?

Excellent advice in this blog post from Jeffrey Cufaude. Excerpt:

People reading the paper or checking their phones during a workshop. The crossed arms or sea of silence during a staff meeting.  A small group that always seems to gather during breaks in a strategic planning session.

During any facilitation effort, you are going to see all kinds of individual and group behavior, often feeling the need to do something about what you are seeing.  The critical question is simple: should you?

In his great facilitation primer, The Skilled Facilitator, Roger Schwarz offers us five critical questions we can answer to guide us in determining whether or not we should intervene.  I offer them below verbatim coupled with my own commentary on them.

Click to read the rest.

How to use Twitter for social learning

Click here to register for a free account at Social Learning Centre which allows you to access their many modules on using Twitter for learning. Topics include: Getting Started; The Basics; Presentations and Events; Classes, Training & Learning . .  and more.

 

 

It's fast approaching! Are you attending this excellent event in May?

Last year I attended the annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science. Although the days were long, the sessions were valuable and very educational. It was one of the best professional conferences I have attended in a long while.

Time flies and this year's conference is coming up quickly: May 24-27. The early-bird rate for the conference, being held in Chicago, is good until the end of March. Click to take a look at the roster of speakers. I look forward to hearing people such as Daniel Levitin, Roy Baumeister, Jean Decety, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Barry Schwartz, Jonathan Haidt, Elizabeth Page-Gould, Elaine Hatfield, and Carol Tavris.

As you might guess, I particularly want to hear Tavris's program:

Debunking Pseudoneuroscience

For decades, psychology teachers have worried about getting psychobabble out of their students' heads and good psychological science in. Now we have another challenge: getting students to think critically about neurosexism, pseudoneuroscience, and other forms of biobunk. I'll try to show why this effort is crucial in a biomedical age marked by reductionism and corruption as well as by amazing scientific advances.

My question for you: Will you be attending APS in May?

Behaviorism doesn't work? Humanism is overrated? So say the authors of this oft-read article

The classic article "Neuroscience of Leadership" (strategy+business) is several years old now, but it's still worth reading. Or rereading if you haven't done so recently. I thought of the article last week when I saw someone recommending a management approach based on behaviorism. Specifically, I thought of these words by the article's authors David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz:

Many existing models for changing people’s behavior are drawn from a field called behaviorism. The field emerged in the 1930s and was led by psychologist B.F. Skinner and advertising executive John B. Watson, building on Ivan Pavlov’s famous concept of the condi- tioned response: Associate the ringing of a bell with food, and a dog can be made to salivate at the sound. The behaviorists generalized this observation to people, and established an approach to change that has some- times been caricatured as: “Lay out the M&Ms.” For each person, there is one set of incentives — one combination of candy colors — that makes the best motivator. Present the right incentives, and the desired change will naturally occur. If change doesn’t occur, then the mix of M&M colors must be adjusted.

Yet there is plenty of evidence from both clinical research and workplace observation that change efforts based on typical incentives and threats (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run. For example, when people routinely come late to meetings, a manager may reprimand them. This may

"Defining High Quality Education: The Education We Need for the 21st Century"

Click to watch a keynote address titled "Defining High Quality Education: The Education We Need for the 21st Century" delivered by Dr. Yong Zhao at Pacific University College of Education. I read via Twitter that Dr. Zhao received a standing ovation when he gave a talk at Learning & the Brain earlier this month.

Why are most panels at conferences so boring?

How many panel sessions have you attended that were worth your time? I bet your answer is "not many." Why? This post from Scott Berkun's Speaker Confessions to which I link below addresses most of the major problems. And cites some remedies.

Almost every panel I have attended over the decades that was beneficial to attendees was the result of lots of pre-panel planning and discussion. Of course, this prep time is one of the remedies mentioned in the post.

From "Why panel sessions suck (and how to fix them)":

Most training conferences in most industries resort to what’s called a panel session. This is where 3 to 5 experts get up on stage and each one, in turn, bores the audience to death.

Why do panels still happen? One reason. They’re sooooo tempting.

In theory a panel is jam packed with goodness, as it gets more people on stage at the same time, creates something real and spontaneous, and all things being equal more interesting stuff should happen than your average lecture.

Why doesn’t it work? Here’s why:

Click to read the rest.