Flipped History Hangout 12-19-13

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to hangout with the Flipped History rockstars in my PLN, but last night we all got together for another great conversation via Google Hangouts.

Our crew consisted of myself, Karl Lindgren-Streicher, Jason Bretzmann, David Fouch, Kaelyn Bullock, George Phillip, and Kenny Bosch. 

Some of the topics discussed included: new strategies, leveraging emerging edtech, upcoming conferences (ex. FlipCon14) and our closing segment - holiday beverages of choice.

Archived Hangout Below
(View on YouTube)

Four Unique Perspectives on Flipping History

A few months ago, I asked four rockstar educators in my PLN to share their journey's and unique perspectives on flipping their history courses.  These videos were generosity contributed as part of the free Flipped Social Studies eSeminar (archive and resources still available here.)

I have recently been asked on several occasions how other educators besides myself have incorporated aspects of Flipped Learning into their social studies courses.  Well, what better way to learn than to hear directly from these innovative teachers themselves.  Enjoy the videos and do not hesitate to connect and add these guys to your PLN, they have all helped and inspired me tremendously throughout my own journey.

Karl Lindgren-Streicher
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Jason Bretzmann
View on Vimeo




David Fouch
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Frank Franz
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Who Are Your Top 10 Connected Educators?

I am excited to be part of a team brought together by the US Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology to create an EdTech Developer's Guide over the next six weeks.  The main goal of this initiative is to provide information and resources that will help developers gain a better understanding of the complex and evolving education landscape.  This will, in turn, lead to more effective and meaningful technology integration as these products and services will better align with the needs of students and educators throughout the nation.

A section of this handbook will provide developers with "top ten lists" of connected educators, blogs, events, and podcasts.  What better place to start creating these lists than to reach out to all of you in my incredible PLN!

We will start with connected educators.  Who would you include in your top 10 list?  

If you are interested in participating, please enter up to 10 (less is certainly ok) educators in the form below that you strongly believe we should include in the publication.

Form Link
I thank you for your contributions to this exciting new (and I believe incredibly valuable) project.  I will continue reaching out over the next few weeks for more feedback and also for educators who are interested in contributing vignettes for the final publication.

"Level Up With Gamification" Event Archive

I recently had the fortune of again teaming up with colleague Brian Germain and the team at Highlander Institute to conduct our "Level Up With Gamification" event.  As expected, Brian rocked it with his contagious enthusiasm, while Shawn Rubin of Highlander did an awesome job with the logistics and providing us with incredible feedback.  The teachers and administrators who attended did a great job of diving right into our competitions and asked thoughtful questions throughout.  I'd also like to thank Roshni Mirchandi for providing great feedback for us as well via the Edthena platform and for attending last week's session.

For those who could not attend either event but are interested in gamification, I have included the Google Presentation and video archive below.  The presentation is from our most recent event (12/12), while the video is from our previous session (11/14).  Although we made a few improvements to the recent event, the video from the first still aligns well with the Google Presentation below.

Level Up Google Presentation (12/12/13)



Level Up Video Archive (11/14/13)




 As always, please reach out and connect with us if you have any questions or comments.  Level up!

Flipped Mastery Discussion With Mike Bruckner

I recently had an incredible conversation with Mike Bruckner regarding Flipped Mastery, particularly how to structure and manage mastery learning.  In conversations leading up to our GHO, it was evident that Mike had put a tremendous amount of time and effort into understanding mastery learning as well as predicting some of the challenges that he would face during implementation.  I therefore thought that recording our conversation on air would prove helpful to many of those who shared similar interests, concerns, or general questions about the approach.

 Here are just a few of the topics that we covered:

Why Flipped Mastery?
Learning Goals
Assessments / Rubrics
Learning Experiences (Group Work)
Retakes
Acclimating Students / Parents
Grading Systems

Here is the Google Document that we worked off of during our discussion, including commentary and helpful resources links.

The archived conversation is included below.  Please reach out to Mike and I if interested in Flipped Mastery or moving towards a mastery learning environment in general.  Mike is well on his way towards implementing a robust mastery system and is another great resource for anyone considering this approach.

View on YouTube