My First Time Flipping Language Arts

Monday evening began my first attempt to Flip Language Arts in my class room.  I stayed up pretty late that night and created the video that turned out to be a little more than 7 minutes.  It was a writing strategy to help students come up with ideas for writing personal narratives.  I sent the parents a pretty lengthy email explaining to them what Flipping was and how this would work.  Tuesday, I talked to the kids in depth about it and showed them how to access the video at home.  We talked about plans for kids that don't have Internet or what would happen if the Internet was down.  I thought we had all the bases covered. Then I sent the kids home.  Tuesday night I got about a half a dozen emails, as I was sitting at my son's football practice.  Some people couldn't access the video.  I had emailed the video as an attachment to myself in case that happened.  I like to be prepared!  I simply emailed the video to those parents that emailed me.  I had no idea what to expect on Wednesday. 

The first kid that arrived on Wednesday morning had a note saying that the video didn't work.  Probably about the next 10 kids that arrived also had a note.  My thought was "uh oh".  That about summed it up.  Out of 56 students in two classes, only 6 were able to view the video and three of them were because I emailed it to the parents.  I would say that my first day of flipping language arts was an EPIC fail.

That doesn't mean that I won't continue.  Tommytude is not a quitter.  It turns out that the problem was with the LMS that our county has provided us.  Come to think of it the LMS wasn't even the real problem.  Many people simply didn't have the proper plug ins to watch the video.  I even had one parent bring in their laptop and I used it to figure out how to access the video.  The process of figuring it out would have been enough to make me lose my hair if I didn't already sport and very shiny dome.  I found out that when kids log in at school, Vimeo, SchoolTube, YouTube and Teachertube are all blocked.  Isn't that pleasant?  "grrrrrr"

I put on the video in class and watched myself teach along with the kids.  It was a bit weird being taught by myself.  I did realize that I'm not as funny in the video as I am in person.  That was verified by my students.  It didn't help that my family was sound asleep when I was trying to record the video, so I was trying not to be too loud.  One email I just received a few minutes ago chewed me out for giving homework that required a computer.  Let's just say the email was very rude.  I never knew I would offend someone by trying to be a 21st Century teacher.  I typed out a very nice response and told Tommytude to stay out of it.

Tonight I will be working on my next flip video.  Nobody is at home right now, so I can talk louder.  I also plan on incorporating some of the wigs I wear in class to ratchet up the entertainment level.  I will send the kids home tomorrow to watch another video and I'm sure there will be some that don't have Internet and others that can't watch the video because of a plug in.  It might even further insult any parent that is against their child needing a computer for homework.  Whatever happens, I just hope it's better than what I dealt with today.  If not, I'll keep trying.