Chromebooks - Aren't They Just Toys? II

Posted by Rachel Wente-Chaney CC License

A Flippin' Success: Chromebooks in a Freshman Science Classroom

@joe_edtech

One of my favorite made-up words is "transformativeness" (I want to give Renee Hobbs credit for that. I heard it first at her workshop on Fair Use in the Classroom.). I think of that word everytime we talk about our 1:1 program. We didn't roll out Chromebooks so that teachers and students can do what they've always done more efficiently. We rolled out Chromebooks so that our students could have learning experiences that were never possible before.

It is still early in our program, but we already have some success stories to tell. For instance, Mr. Bill Stafford, science teacher, has been experimenting some with the "Flipped Classroom" instructional model. In a nutshell, in a "Flipped Classroom" model, students receive lecture instruction at home from online videos or interactive materials, and then practice the skills they learned in classroom with the guidance and support of the teacher and collaborative groups. In this model, students are up and active in the classroom as they interact with the material. 

When she works on math homework in the traditional model, my daughter only has her parents to turn to for help at home. That is a problem when they were both liberal arts majors! In the "Flipped" classroom model, parents can actually watch the instruction with their students at home, and students have their classmates and teachers to rely on for support when they are working towards mastery. (For more information on the flipped classroom, you can visit the District 113 "Flipped Classroom" Resources page. Or you can join my partner Lisa Berghoff and I for our Education On Air session on April 9.)

The following is the first in a series of videos that we are producing in conjunction with our monthly principal's newsletter to highlight some of the "transformativeness" that is happening in our 1:1 classrooms. This is Principal Audris Griffith interviewing Science Teacher Bill Stafford about his "Flipping" experiment:

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You can find the DHS Principal's Newsletter by clicking here. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to include them in the comment box below or email me at jtaylor@dist113.org.