Trained and Ready to Go!

Lots of new teachers are joining Project iAchieve for the 2013-14 school year. We have grown from 10 flipped classrooms with iPads to 18 and have added 10 additional iPad Media Kit (iPad & Apple TV) teachers. We have now deployed over 75 Media Kits with more to come as the year continues. While we haven't added additional iPod touch classrooms, we have several new teachers moving into those positions. And we have lots of continuing teachers that we want to support. Lots of summer training opportunities!!

Our new flipped classroom teachers were invited to 4 days of training to get them ready to implement flipped learning and iPads into their classrooms this year. The continuing teachers joined them on the last two days.

Day One: Making a Dent in the Universe, Part 1
Steve Jobs is quoted as saying that Apple was making a dent in the universe with its innovative products and ideas. We like to think that Project iAchieve is making a dent in Creighton's School District's learning universe with the integration of mobile devices and flipped learning,

 We started our first day with the teachers rating themselves on several topics - the flipped model, using iPads, video creation, and flipped learning lesson planning . The plan was to have them rate their learning each day of the training to see how they had grown. I think it was a success and we showed quite a bit of growth. I even learned a lot during those 4 days!

     

                                       Day 1                                                            Day 2                                                          Day 4

For the next portion of the morning, we spent time talking about flipped learning and building a common understanding. We utilized the newly published Literature Review of Flipped Learning. One of the biggies from this research study was the development of the "Four Pillars of Flipped Learning".
     

     

 Images from: http://www.flippedlearning.org/domain/31

Working in groups, the teachers research one of the pillars and created a poster representing the ideas from their pillar, what it would look like in a classroom, and then presented it to the other groups. We kept the posters up throughout the week and referred to them often. The concepts guided our learning and interactions.

           

   

      

We spent some more time investigating and sharing information from the flipped learning lit review, discussed our teacher and student agreements, parent meetings, apps, and began introducing the group to their Media Kits. In addition to a cart with 30  student iPads, our flipped learning teachers receive a teacher iPad, Apple TV, and HDMI projector for their classroom. This allows teachers to mirroring learning content from their iPads and students to share their learning with others as they mirror their iPads.

It was a long day but we did give them some homework. Each teacher received a copy of the book Flip Your Classroom by Bergmann and Sams. After reading Chapter 3 in the book, they posted reflections on a Lino canvas for our next day opening discussion. Here are some of the reflections on Chapter 3.

Click here to read all of the responses.

Check back for the next post summarizing our Day Two training!