Looking ahead to next year? Already?

I wanted to remember a few things for planning my flipped classes next year, and I automatically opened up Word to type it out (I guess that's better than scratching it out on a napkin), but then I realized that this blog is probably a better place for it. So here goes.

• Put secret questions in the videos
• Remind the viewer to press pause and attempt the example
• Vary the videos - how about adding movie clips or cut-away photos? Speech bubbles?
• Check very VERY carefully at the beginning of the year that students are taking notes on the videos
• Change the whole paradigm of what goes on in the classroom. Hearing students call it a Math "lab" takes a bit of getting used to, but it's probably more accurate. Activities in class as opposed to homework is also kind of neat
• Come up with ways to vary classroom (I mean Math Lab) activities. Cater to all the levels of learning (think "Bloom") and students' different skill levels and learning abilities
• Rethink how evaluations can be done. How do you "flip" a test. Do you have to have tests? But they will still have exams, so how to best prepare them for that as you teach them the material. I'm already bothered by ideas on this one, because I know that we're still stuck in "cookie cutter" curricula and evaluation, but students are anything but cookie cutter kids.
• Step away from the front of the class. There's an English teacher who arranges the room with this desk at the back... and when I saw Crystal Kirch's class video panning the room, it was student's working on the blackboard or whiteboard, and most of them didn't even seem to notice that she was filming (what an out-dated word that is, isn't it?)
• Situational Problems: in Quebec where I teach we have to evaluate kids' abilities to take one big monster application that requires three or four different topics in its open-ended solution. I need to stop hating that and use that kind of idea as a teaching tool.

Okay, this is starting to turn way too idealistic - explains why I'm a teacher. Let's see how I feel about this next week when I'm poring over piles of exam marking.