Homework in a Flipped Math Class?

I spend more time assessing if my students did notes than the length of the video(s).
This morning I had a realization. I spend more time assessing whether or not my students did notes (via a 3 Question Daily Quiz and me checking notes) than it would take to watch the video in class. For example it may take around 20 or 25 minutes to hand out Daily Quiz Papers, check each student's notes, and correct the Daily Quizzes. The videos are about 10 minutes long and I assign one or more commonly two for homework. This means that I could simply show the video during class and either gain 10 minutes or not lose any time at all.

This is powerful for many reasons:

•  I have seen several students watching the video while listening to music. So they aren't hearing my explanations and listening to my think-alound as I do one or two example problems.
• I have also seen other students who fly through the notes because they move the video scroll bar to where I have writing and pause it, then move the video scroll bar to where I have writing, ... or in other words copy from the video instead of watching and listening.

If we watched the video in class then I would know that they were both watching the video and listening to the video.

The downside is that many students watch the video, pause it to write notes, etc. like they are supposed to. I personally love the idea of my students taking notes for homework because they can take notes at their own pace. I would hate to change the nature of the class because a few students think the notes are more important than learning from the video. I know that the videos are available online, therefore they could go back and take better notes if they want, but I don't know if they would.


After this realization ...
If I do decide to simply watch the videos during class, I realized that the video doesn't have to come at the beginning of the class period. It could come somewhere in the learning cycle. Whenever I hear Ramsey Musallam (Twitter: @ramusallam) talk about the importance of exploration, learning cycles, and his explore-flip-apply model I completely agree but I struggle knowing how to do it in Geometry in my classroom. This could be one way that I can do it.

My class could:

1. Spend some time exploring a concept using a paper activity, web activity, NCTM Illuminations activity, etc ...
2. Then watch the video and taking notes
3. Do some practice activities using problems from the textbook, or completing some task to show mastery.
4. Synthesize their learning with a detailed summary.

No homework in a math class?
This will only work if I don't assign any homework at all. No matter what I assign for homework, I will want to go around the room and assess it. This generally takes 20 to 30 minutes of valuable class time. On the other hand if I limit our math learning to 85 minutes every other day, I wonder if this will be a detriment or not. Assigning homework is a great time to have more time on task, especially for my lower students. When I am considering making a change my first thought is "How will it impact my lower students?" My top students will be fine as long as I deliver content, but my low students need support.


Explore-Flip-Apply?
If my students are only working during class, then a struggle is created between exploring and applying. I want to keep my students together. I am afraid that I might spend too much time exploring or applying and not keep up with the pace of the class.

I really struggled last year with asynchronous learning, my top students went really fast and my lowest students went really slow. If I keep them all together then the top students help the lower students. This is especially important my classes because the difference between high students and low students is really wide (at a high school with no honors math classes in a class required for every student).


Well...
This blog post isn't as enlightening as I hoped it would be. But it has helped me think through some different possibilities that I need to keep thinking about.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please leave them below. I would love to read your thoughts.

Teaching in the Information Age

Many people, including Sir Ken Robinson, have talked about the fact that our education system was created for the Industrial Age. Students are required to take similar classes and the hope, originally, was that they all graduate with similar abilities. The education system realized that this is not possible, so it has been adjusting to meet individual needs, a.k.a. "Differentiated Instruction." In other words an Industrial education system is trying to adapt to meet new demands in the Information Age, but I don't know if it will be able to adjust fast enough, especially because the Information Age changes very rapidly.

Information Age Tools
Let me tell you of an experience I had that is not uncommon. Last week, in a Geometry class, there was a day for students to work on their quarter projects and I there was one student who had finished his project. I told him to turn it in and he can do work for a different class. He was working on either Literature or History, I couldn't tell. But this student, who is a very good student, was constantly doing web searches to make sure that he understood the questions on his worksheet and that the answer he wrote down on his worksheet was correct. I have seen this repeated during a study hall period, and watching my students work in my classroom before school, after school, and during lunch. Today's high school students are aware of the Information Age tools that are available to them, and they use them. I think that the days is gone when teachers can close the door and assume that we are teaching in a vacuum. Students carry devices with them that open the door, not only to the entire school, but to a world and history full of information. Maybe it is time for teachers to have their students do more web searches and fewer worksheets.

What does an Information Age Classroom look like?
The next logical question is, what would an Information Age classroom look like? What kind of classroom would prepare our students for the future that they will be working in? My answer is ... I don't know. I imagine that it would have the four c's from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. I imagine that it is more project based learning and less content front-loaded instruction. I imagine that it is more open ended solution finding, than finding the "correct" answer. There are complex problems in the world that need to be solved, and students need to be taught how to handle those problems with the tools in their era, not a past one.

My Classroom
I would love to say that my classroom is like this, but it is not. I am still trying to figure out how to adjust my teaching to meet these needs. My last major shift has been to flip my class. I think my next shift will be to more project based learning because I believe that this is what students will need to develop 21st Century Skills. My hesitation has to do with the need to still prepare students for their next math class and future math classes. I will get there, not because I need to, but because my students need me to.


If you have suggestions or examples of what PBL looks like in a Geometry or Statistics class, please comment below.