I KNEW They Were Out There

I knew they were out there.....other teacher educators who were integrating technology into their courses---some, dare I even say it, flipping their courses as well.  I am here at the Literacy Research Association Conference in Dallas, TX, and I have found several teacher educators who are flipping their courses to make them  more authentic, meaningful, and hands-on.  Some call it inverted instruction; some subscribe to techno-driven, student-focused terminology.  However it's labeled, I am finding other teacher educators who are utilizing digital tools for the direct instruction portion of their courses, so their pre-service teachers are more engaged in the learning process.  This is so exciting!

Here are just a couple of excellent examples in one session I attended yesterday:

- Lisa Zawilinski from the University of Hartford teaches literacy methods courses to pre-service teachers.  She has been flipping her courses for two semesters now.  In addition to screencasting lectures, she has recorded her interpretations of running records, so students can listen to her thought processes as she shows them on the screen to prepare them to enact and analyze their own running records.

- Laurie Henry from the University of Kentucky found herself in a unique situation when she started teaching a course focusing on teaching 21st century learners.  Her students were made up of a combination of pre-service teachers, grad students, and practicing teachers.  She decided this would be just the course to try inverted instruction, so she plunged in enthusiastically.  Since broadcasting the sound of her voice did not particularly appeal to her, she decided to search for resources and utilize the open content available.  The majority of the videos she used were TEDEd videos of presentations given by experts such as Sir Ken Robinson.  Her students then responded by sketching (print or digital) their interpretations of the videos and other resources they had explored, similar to my own use of blogging as a response (blog entry soon to come), but with the artistic flair.  These sketches acted as discussion starters for the in-class portions of the class.  

- Kim Richard from Saint Joseph College has been flipping her literacy methods courses over the course of the last year.  She started her research with a survey and periodically checked in with students to inquire about their reactions to the new model (similar to the podcast interviews of my own students).  She shared how her students valued the personal nature of their relationships with her and each other as they were interacting more and building social, collaborative relationships with all of the hands-on, meaningful in-class activities.  Kim even shared that she was NOT the most technologically savvy instructor at the outset of this research, but her openness with this aspect endeared her to students as they worked through difficulties together.  

These are just a few of the teacher educators who are utilizing the flipped classroom model to create more student-centric classrooms, giving pre-service teachers the experience of engaged learning, so hopefully, just maybe, they will choose to create a similar environment in their own future classrooms.