The “flipped” classroom is an idea that teachers shoot a video of a lesson, then make the video available online for learners to view at home. Class time is devoted to problem solving and guidance. It’s an approach that flips the delivery of the lesson to homework.

Dorian Love posted an excellent piece with various viewpoints on Flipping The Classroom last year on Teacher’s Monthly. Here is an infographic explanation of the flipped classroom from Column Five Media. What do YOU think? Add your comments below.

Click the infographic to zoom in:

Besides operating within both the education and digital industry, the team members at Quirk Education have a sincere passion for online learning. We thought it would be a great idea to put together a nifty infographic which explains how online learning came about, and importantly, why it’s beneficial. This infographic serves to introduce you to the awesome possibilities of learning via the Internet, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Click image below for full size …

One of the great boons of being an ICT teacher is that all my classes take place in the computer room. I don’t have to wait for the school to adopt a laptop per child programme to get computers into my lessons. In my classes I place all the course content, together with tutorials, SCORMs and instructional vodcasts on the course Moodle page. If a student is absent they have all the resources at their disposal to complete whatever assignment has been set. In this way it might even be possible for a student to miss all my classes, and study entirely online. Blended or Hybrid Learning, as it is often called, refers to any course which is conducted partly online, and partly face-to-face. With my Moodle pages accessible both from on campus and off-campus, all my classes are now organized as blended learning.

A recent report suggests that by 2019, 50% of all American High School courses will be delivered online. There is some research, also, to suggest that Blended Learning is more effective than either Online Learning or Face-to-Face Learning. Even if this is not the case, it is clear that Blended Learning is now an important part of teh educational landscape.

I have not researched this, but it seems to me that my classes can roughly be divided into three groups. About a third of the class seems to enjoy the online aspect of my classes. Some of them arrive in class with much of the work already done. The Moodle activity logs show that some of them log on in the evenings from home and view content or submit assignments online. Others work ahead of the pace, physically present in the classroom, but working as if the content were online. That does not mean that they don’t ask questions in class. They usually ask for clarification, for reassurance that they understand what they are meant to be doing, or for clarification around aspects of the tutorialized online content.

Another third, however, clearly prefers to access the course content mostly offline. They seldom log on to Moodle from home, and appear to need me to explain the content to them, in a very traditional manner. When I withhold this instruction they appear lost and become extremely anxious! It is fashionable to rubbish teacher talk, and too much teacher talk is bad. But for a large number of kids, teacher talk appears still to be necessary. Particularly they need teachers to model the thinking process. You can pause and rewind a vodcast or SCORM, but you can’t ask it a question, or ask it to explain in another way. It is easy to miss the why you are doing something part of a vodcast or SCORM. Teachers are usually quite good at putting things in a way which makes it easier to understand, and many children rely on this.

A number of my lessons consist of going over, with the whole class what was posted online before the lesson. This allows me to talk through the bits that are missing from the tutorial video or SCORM. Some students listen to the instruction, and use the online tutorials to review or revise the content afterwards.

But there is a final third of the class which comprises students who do not seem able to work on their own, or be able to get what they need from whole class instruction. They appear to need personal attention. Sometimes it is just that what was written on the class Moodle or said in class needs to be re-phrased. Often it is because it was not understood and the teacher needs to find a way of explaining it more clearly. Often it is because of lacunae in the student’s baggage, the need to take a step back and consolidate past knowledge before the student is ready to move on. Often these students do not really listen to whole class instruction, but wait for the personal attention.

I have found that leaving out any of the above methods of delivery leads to students getting left behind. About a third of the class is basically able to teach themselves. Before computers they probably read the chapter ahead of class, and seldom needed the teacher to explain much at all. A third are able to get what they need from whole class instruction, be it teacher talk or handouts or video clips or whatever. And the last third need individual attention to master the content.

Before any lesson I make sure that I have uploaded any resources related to the lesson on the relevant class Moodle page. This includes a full description and rubric for any task set, handouts, exemplars or documents students can download, video clips or SCORMs which tutorialize the content and a link which allows the student to submit the assignment online. During the lesson I take some time to explain how to perform the task, and where to find tutorialized content. I then circulate around the room continually, answering individual queries, showing particular students how to do this or that. I demonstrate particular aspects of the content that the class as a whole appears to be stuck on.

What I am describing is of course a blended learning situation in which the classroom has been partially flipped. Much of the teacher instruction is housed in tutorialized material stored online accessible both from home and at school. The role of the teacher then is to spend the majority of her time helping children negotiate the process of solving problems. In my experience though, classrooms can only ever be partially flipped, at least for the moment. A significant number of children still need teacher talk to help them assimilate the content and manage how to use the content to go about solving the problem or task set.

It seems to me that this suggests that the best teaching environment is one in which all three modes of delivery are optimized. The classroom needs to operate with many channels going on at the same time.

The end is (almost) in sight for the chalkboard with hand-drawn diagrams of the way the world around us works. Thanks to Flash, a fairly simple to use Adobe product, quality interactive simulations are becoming more readily available on the internet that are well suited to classroom teaching.

Pearson Education and ForgeFX have teamed up to create simulation based learning applications that allow learners to become active participants in the classroom. I checked out some of their free web-based simulations to get an idea of what it’s all about.

Most of the simulations are quite interactive and give the learner an option of various different scenarios that provide different end results which is great for comparison and testing.

Here is an overview of the top 6 simulations:

Design and Test Simulator

This interactive 3D simulation allows students to work on the development of a piece of virtual machinery, capable of launching giant paintballs into the air. Using the Design and Test Methodology, students must create their hurling machine so that it is capable of hitting the multiple targets within the virtual world.

In order to hit all of the targets in the virtual environment, students must design their device so it is capable of launching for distance, height, and strength. Students are able to customize the arm length, spring strength, ball weight, angle of release, and tension in order to hit each target.

Students are given a budget that they must complete the project within, each shot at the target will cost the student part of their budget, so the fewer shots required the better the student does. Launchers must be designed for the assigned task, tested, modified, tested again, and repeated until the student has hit each target.

Topographical Map Simulator

This real-time 3D simulation illustrates how topographic maps are created and used to depict changes in elevation. A topographic map is characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief using contour lines. Rendered in real-time 3D, it is easy to understand how topographic maps are created since the simulation shows the same virtual environment in both a 3D mesh and 2D map format.

Students are able to sculpt mountains and valleys in real-time and see the changes to the corresponding topographic map as well as the 3D environment. To represent elevation, relief, and slope on the topographic map the simulation uses contour lines and elevation level indicators, while it simultaneously renders the scene in 3D.

On a topographic map, a contour line connects points of equal elevation. Select the Raise or Lower tool, and then start digging into the 3D terrain. See how the changes you make to the mountain affect the topographic map and 3D terrain.

Seismic Waves Simulator

What happens to the ground during an earthquake? Find out by creating your own earthquake using this interactive 3D simulation. An actual earthquake will always create Primary, Secondary, and Surface waves, using this 3D simulation students can isolate waves to understand the different types of seismic activity.

Select the type of wave, the strength of the waves, the angle, and the zoom levels for the simulation to run. Waves can be played forward and backwards through time, in textured or wire-frame 3D models, all controlled by the user of the simulation.

During an earthquake the exact speed of P and S waves varies depending on the material they are traveling through. The ratio between the speeds of the two waves will remain relatively. P waves generally travel 1.7 times faster than S waves. Using this ratio, scientists can calculate the distance between any point on the earth’s surface and the earthquake’s focus.

3D Plant and Animal Cells Simulator

Cells are the basic unit of structure and function in living things. If you look inside cells, there are even smaller structures called organelles. Each organelle has a different function within a cell. Learn about plant and animal cell organelles in this interactive 3D simulation. View the cells from any angle by clicking and dragging, select a plant structure to learn more about its function.

Students are able to examine cells by dragging and dropping the cell to view it from any angle. Individual structures can be selected to view them in more detail.

4-Stroke Engine Simulator

Most automobiles use four-stroke heat engines. These four-strokes occur repeatedly in each cylinder in the engine. This is a real-time 3D simulation which allows the student to explore how a four stroke engine works and to gain an understanding of the different strokes involved.

The simulation gives students access to a running 4 cylinder engine, in a safe and risk-free environment. Students can use the simulation to learn how a piston works independently, and within a four-stroke engine. The simulation allows students to watch 3D animations of the four-stroke engine from any angle or distance, speed-up and slow-down the engine, as well as pause and show engine labels – all in real-time 3D. A complex mechanical process, like a four-stroke engine, is an easily understood lesson when delivered as an interactive 3D training simulation.

Biomes of the Earth Simulation

This online e-learning application helps students visualize how biomes are climatically and geographically defined as similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, and are often referred to as ecosystems.

The simulation lets you take part in an around-the-world scientific expedition researching Earth’s biomes. A biome is a group of land ecosystems with similar climates and organisms. It is mostly the climate—temperature and precipitation—in an area that determines its biome. Interact with the 3D globe to see the worldwide distribution of the biomes on our planet.

Click and drag anywhere on the 3D globe to spin and view it from any direction. Select one of the nine biomes to see where they occur on Earth, or show all locations at once to see where biomes occur in relation to each other. Click on the stars to get photographs and detailed climate information, including average temperature and precipitation levels, for cities located within each biome.

Summary

If you’re charged with educating and training students, you’re aware of the challenges associated with keeping them engaged with educational material. Using highly-realistic 3D simulations, that are web-based, allows you to provide students with immersive content that keep them engaged for longer periods of time. You can see all the simulations here.

Yesterday evening I went to my twelve year old son’s parent evening. Not a single teacher had anything negative to say about his progress. He is bright, working hard and achieving an A aggregate. He received a wonderful report, and I should have been very happy, but I wasn’t. His older brother is exactly the same, and I’m not happy. When I was at school my reports were equally glowing, and that’s the problem. I was also a Lazy A student. I sailed effortlessly through school and University, and I’m not complaining. But the problem is that I never amounted to anything. Not really. I became a teacher, and I hope that my students think I am a good teacher, but for someone who was top of the class all through school, I have never really amounted to anything. And that’s the problem.

All the research indicates that all over the world, Lazy A students are not amounting to anything. They do alright: of course they do. But they don’t go on to achieve what they ought to be achieving, and that amounts to a massive loss for our society.

If it’s all too easy, and you never get to push yourself, you don’t go on to achieve what you are capable of achieving, and often the really high flyers come from the ranks of those who have had to overcome some adversity, who have learned from the hurdles they had to overcome, who have learned how to succeed because it wasn’t just plain sailing all the way. It seems that what people really need in life to help them become successful is a good dose of failure along the way.

Winston Churchill is the archetypal example. His life was one long catalogue of failure preparing him for success! Increasingly our society is coming to understand the necessity of failure. In the corporate world companies prefer to hire employees who have been blooded by working for companies that have failed than those who have only ever known the blissful ignorance of success. Increasingly in Education, too, we have begun to recognize that we are doing our students a disservice if we make it too easy for them.

I’ve been mulling over what to do with my Lazy A students, the ones I teach as well as my sons. My eldest son is in high school now, and writing exams. My wife kept catching him on the computer, playing games instead of studying. He has his own company, called Back of The Bakkie Productions that he and a few friends have formed to create games. They are collaborating with someone in America who is helping them with the 3D modeling. He spent much of the time he was supposed to be studying for his exams, on Skype with his partners talking through some problems they are experiencing with the new games engine they are modding. I should have been angry. He should have been doing his school work, but actually I was as pleased as punch.

He will get a good mark in the exams anyway – he always does! But the time he spent working on the game is teaching him priceless lessons. He is learning to overcome what often seems like insurmountable barriers. He has had to start learning a programming language so that he can mod the game effectively. He has had to deal with copyright issues around the choice of music, and a host of issues around difficulties in collaborating with others. He has had to learn to deal with the criticism of others, and the bitter realization that sometimes you can’t get your way when working with partners. He has had to learn how to work around short-comings in the games engine they are using, how to cut his losses and start again, and how to accept times when he had to walk away and learn new skills before he could move forward.

These are hard lessons for a fourteen year old to learn, and I am really proud of what he and his friends have achieved. Most importantly there is nothing resembling the Lazy A students about his games design persona! He finds it hard, unlike his school work. He works tirelessly at trying to overcome his short-comings. Games design requires a really hard set of skills. You need to have enough programming knowledge to be able to tweak existing engines and add your own twist, but you also need to be creative, and savvy about the world out there. The group has constantly posted what they are doing on Internet forums to get feedback from other games designers and players. What really impresses me also is the amount of mentoring and support they have received from this community. It is a model of what education should be, and usually isn’t.

The Horizon Report for 2011 has listed Gaming in Education as the next big thing, and Games have a great deal to teach us. Multi-player games in particular. Games like the often derided World of Warcraft teach us that we need to set really hard challenges for our students to overcome, and then be extremely tolerant of failure, and very supportive in providing mentoring. In a game, there is no margin for error. If you fail, you die! But you can start again, and again, and again, until you get it right. Whatever level you are in the game, you are accepted as a full and important member of the group. Others will show you what to do, and help you along the way. And every time you level up, your achievements will be recognized and celebrated by the group as a whole.

By comparison, in our classrooms, we tend to reject the notion of failure and consequently make it all too easy for students.  I’m not suggesting for one moment that we need to throw the curriculum away and all start playing World of Warcraft all day! But we do need to learn how to make our curriculum a great deal more like a game, or we risk impoverishing our society by accepting failure because we do not accept the importance of using failure to cultivate real success.

By Anna Malczyk
The advent of the internet heralded the “information age”, a time when vast quantities of human knowledge were available to anyone with a computer and internet connection.

For education, the potential seemed endless: anybody could read and publish anything, meaning that anybody could teach and be taught. However, access did not equal utility. The sheer amount of information made it difficult to find anything that was accurate, relevant or high quality. Accessing the web soon became a matter of information overload.

People who are unfamiliar with a topic have no reliable way to assess the quality and correctness of information on it. They must rely on trusted experts. Recently, content experts have begun to appreciate this process of filtering, ranking and verifying information – considered under the catch-all term “curation”. Just like the curator of a museum chooses pieces to display, based on which are the most interesting, relevant and representative, a knowledge curator sifts through the available information and uses their skills and knowledge to assess, order and categorise it. This vital step lends meaning to the unshaped mass of data and makes it truly useful. It also means that some of the best-known experts rarely create their own content; they simply organise existing information in a reliable way.

Curators can gather knowledge on any topic – from particle physics to the latest sitcoms – and the web provides many tools to accomplish this. When it comes to educational material, it can be just as hard to find a good curator as it is to find good content. A curator needs four essential traits:

1.    Expertise in the field. First of all, curators must be skilled in and have a broad understanding of their fields, either through study or experience. This may seem self-evident, but many so-called “experts” simply promote a certain point of view or tailor content to favour their beliefs.
2.    Research and evaluation skills. A curator must have a strong grounding in the academic skills of finding and judging material on its reliability. Learners must be able to rely on the fact that the curator has found and filtered a wide range of relevant material.
3.    Creativity. The curator’s job is not merely reactionary; the best curators apply creativity to the way they organise, discover and present the information they find. On the web, information need not be static and linear.
4.    Trustworthiness. Above all, a curator needs a reputation for being unbiased, authoritative and reliable. This can arise from broad public recognition, respect in the professional world and long-standing contributions.

Universities and educational institutions have long been considered the curators of knowledge in society, and this applies equally online. While it may be possible to find all manner of raw data about a field, it can be very hard for a non-expert to put it together in a meaningful way, or discern good data from bad. Online courseware and teaching are excellent ways of melding the scope of the web with the precise skill and reliability of knowledge curators.

To learn more about online learning in South Africa, visit www.GetSmarter.co.za

This video motivates the need for a re-evaluation of the classroom for an ever changing learner. Initially posted on YouTube, one of the comments in reply to the video that particularly stood out was by user Katmarq: “Using technology and new and creative ways to re-engineer education does not mean all the old ways are wrong or bad or unnecessary. It certainly does not mean that traditional teachers wont be needed or that people can be replaces with “machines”. But with new technology, we have a responsibility to really look at how we might make learning more inspiring, more related to what learners already know and more related to what they are interested in.”

Social media statistics are mind-boggling. With 156 million blogs, 200 million Twitter accounts and 750 million Facebook users (accounting for around 40% of all internet users), not to mention literally hundreds of other social platforms around the world, social networking has entrenched itself as one of the top web activities. At the same time, these platforms are often considered frivolous pastimes, rather than the potentially powerful tools that they are.

All learning benefits from social interaction. Students can support and help each other, learn from each other’s successes and mistakes, introduce new ideas into the group, debate to produce solutions, or even just supply a layer of social contact. Groups of students can motivate each other and move forward with greater momentum than students working on their own (for example, in traditional self-study correspondence courses). If the goal of education is to acquire knowledge, experience new perspectives and practice skills, this is achieved most effectively in a group.

Educators must be very careful about how they approach social networking tools in the learning environment. Foremost, social media sites should not constitute the learning platform themselves; they are not purpose-built for this and often lead to distractions, since most of the content and participants are not related to the learning process. However, as a supplemental tool and added social dimension, they can be incredibly effective.

Care should also be taken when deciding on the type of tool to use, and the choice will depend on the nature of the learning program, the available technology and how comfortable the participants are in using it. Messages should move fast and fluidly – but not too fast. There should also be an inbuilt ranking system, so that the most valuable – not the latest – messages are given prominence.

Twitter is excellent for sharing content, but moves too fast to be a stable communication medium. Facebook is fun and collaborative, but rarely focuses the user’s attention. Blogs are good for expressing ideas, but are too authorial for collaborative communication and debate. Forums seem to offer the best medium for collaboration, participation and sharing, since they allow everyone to take the time to read and respond to messages, without being unduly public and distracting.

For any courses with an online component – from traditional university contact courses to entirely online education – social media has the following benefits.

•    It allows for unparalleled democratic contribution from all members. Students don’t need to vie for the educator’s limited time and attention, can take time to consider and research their contributions, and have an equal opportunity to publish their thoughts. In addition to this, since students can make themselves anonymous to a degree, there is less prejudice and stereotyping in the student group.

•    Students can share and build upon each other’s contributions. They can debate actively, “crowdsource” solution to problems, post useful content and share experiences. This process of sharing is one of the cornerstones of the social media experience.

•    The community as a whole decides what the most valuable contributions are by ranking or responding to them. In essence, the community filters or “curates” the content. The teacher acts as a group influencer, but is not the only authoritative voice in the group, allowing for a flatter and more inclusive community.

•    Social media provides a less formal space for students who are physically apart to interact and socialise in a meaningful way. Even when undertaking serious study, being able to chat interpersonally makes the experience less lonely, more enjoyable, and can lead to the formation of valuable social and business relationships.

•    Social media make it easy to track students’ interests and engagement, which helps teachers or facilitators tailor the content more effectively and provide a better experience for students.

When introducing social media, care should be taken to respect private and public spheres of life. Students are more willing to contribute in closed private communities, and few want their education to coexist with their personal social networks. Taking all these considerations into account, social media are immensely powerful for learning, as long as they are used wisely and appropriately.

To find out more about online learning in South Africa, visit www.GetSmarter.co.za

Games are fun. Most people would rather spend their time playing games than working, doing chores, recycling, exercising or helping out at a community centre. However, if there was a way of incorporating the fun elements of games into these mundane or unpleasant activities, it is believed that we would achieve much greater results in our activities, and perform them with more enthusiasm and enjoyment – a win-win situation.

Children tend to learn much more quickly than adults, and this can partly be attributed to the fact that they often learn through practical play and fun, stress-free games. When the mind is engaged, relaxed and focused on attaining a goal in an entertaining medium, learners become more motivated, pick up skills more easily and gain confidence by shedding inhibitions – all essential processes to learning.

“Gamification” is a new term that describes the process of adding game elements and processes to real-world work, education and social activism. These elements could be as simple as awarding high scores and badges for completed tasks, or as subtle and complex as designing an entire project like a multiplayer adventure game.

Either way, adding game elements should focus on three elements: adding an achievable goal, introducing challenges and obstacles to overcome, and encouraging teamwork or competition. These factors, present in virtually all games, are what make them so enjoyable: players get a sense of validation and achievement from completing tasks despite the obstacles along the way. The key is incentive: the players must be motivated by the feedback, rewards and stakes provided by the game or they will lose interest.

Gamification can be applied to an almost unlimited number of situations and environments. Some applications are purely commercial: game elements designed to get customers to engage with brands. Points-based loyalty cards or frequent flyer miles, for example, offer simplistic goals and rudimentary challenges and rewards. Group buying websites encourage social collaboration and proactive sharing challenges to achieve the goal of a discount. Even limited-time offers, like a two-hour flash sale, create a sense of urgency as customers strive to meet the requirements on time.

Gamification theory can also be used to raise work productivity and encourage people to strive towards the “greater good”. A game called “World Without Oil”, developed in 2007, encouraged participants to pretend that there was a petrol shortage in their region and to find simple, collaborative and innovative ways to circumvent this problem. Research later found that the participants not only developed good habits and came up with ingenious ideas, they also continued to practise their responsible behaviours long after the game concluded.

When it comes to education, games can play a valuable role too. Even though most students have the best of intentions, many find it hard to motivate themselves to engage fully with their learning – conflicting responsibilities, boredom and lack of self-confidence are the main culprits. Including a game mechanism overcomes this hurdle because the student gets instant feedback from the learning system – rewards, new challenges, new opportunities to help or collaborate, encouraging progress reports and constantly nearing goals. There is always something to do – a small step to get closer to achieving a goal or becoming the best in the class.

In the future, entire courses – or even degree programs – could be designed as giant cooperative games. For now, however, incorporating meaningful elements of gameplay into curricula is one good way to stimulate students’ interest and increase both motivation and engagement.

Visit www.GetSmarter.co.za for more information about online learning.

Universities are revered institutions of higher learning and many people consider the education they provide to be essential to self-improvement, meaningful employment and the upliftment of society. Unfortunately, many universities have limited resources, have prohibitive fees and are physically rooted to a single locale, making attendance for the vast majority of the population impossible. However, things are changing.

Universities around the world are turning to the internet as a means of spreading knowledge, resources and education to the masses – all for free. Renowned names like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley are making entire courses available online – everything from recorded lecture videos and audio podcasts to reading materials and assignments – with the goal of educating those who are eager to learn, anywhere in the world.

The students don’t earn any official degrees or qualifications, and they don’t get the amount of personal support and feedback that attending (and paying) students get. But they do get free access to the most valuable part: the content and resources. As more universities get on board and expand their offerings, people from around the world can study virtually any subject – from Shakespearean English to astrophysics – at university level. This free, top-class education becomes easily available to those who would otherwise never have the opportunity to access it.

The benefits for the individual are clear. Whether studying purely for interest or working actively towards a professional skill set, anyone with access to the web can log on and learn. Open content provides vital access to knowledge and information for poorer or more marginalised populations, which can improve lives, uplift communities and even raise overall awareness of social and political issues. Better-educated and informed people are more likely to know and exercise their rights, create new work opportunities and strive for a higher quality of life.

The University of Cape Town is joining its international peers with its new UCT OpenContent endeavour. Its stated goal is to “showcase the teaching efforts of UCT academics and encourage the publication of open resources”, and it is achieving this by publishing courseware, textbooks, online tools and other knowledge resources. Though access to the web is still relatively limited in South Africa (about 11% have access to a desktop internet connection), it is valuable for emerging countries to begin contributing to the global knowledge pool, as this introduces valuable local perspectives and innovative new ideas to a worldwide audience.

To find out more about online learning in South Africa, visit www.getsmarter.co.za