A flipped strategy for learning languages (K-12) Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

my name is cylinder Cassini and I
started using online technologies in
2011 the course I use online learning
for is Italian of initio it's in a year
11 and year 12 I be course for beginner
students of Italian I have approximately
30 students every year split into
separate classes the main reason for
adopting blended learning was to make my
teaching more relevant to the 21st
century and what I came up with was
content at home skills in the classroom
and I soon realized that a lot of other
teachers were adopting this model for
languages and they called it the flipped
classroom so in my context the flipped
classroom involves the students going
through the content online at home in
their own time and then coming to class
and working on skills based activities
my main tool is WordPress that's where I
host my course this is my wordpress site
that hosts the abbé initio course so I
have a list of all the topics on the
left and on the right I have all my
video explanations that are also
embedded in the subtopics but it's just
a quick way for students to jump to
explanations when they need to
so students go to whatever topic we're
up to they click on the topic for
example family life they go into the sub
topic for example daily routine and
every unit has this structure other
areas on my site have a site I have a
page with useful links and I've just
collided various websites that are
helpful for languages there's a text to
audio app so that they can hear an
Italian voice saying the words that they
study in or phrases there are language
learning websites etc I also have a
section on writing skills where we're
doing this the second follows the same
logic of the speaking
skills and finally the P tutoring page
where I explain the peer tutoring
project
for my blended learning model rather
than planning lessons I actually planned
the course the entire course early on so
I looked at my program I divided it into
units and sub units and I put it all on
my online platform within WordPress I
then use other tools for example we
create collaborative vocabulary lists
and I do this via Google Docs for my
explanation videos sometimes I simply
use my iPhone I store everything on
YouTube and I keep it public for anyone
to view sometimes I use apps such as
edgy creations to create my videos using
my iPad I've also used Livescribe pen
and screen capture apps are such as
ScreenFlow
my model of blender
learning is what I call content at home
and skills in the classroom basically
the content of my course is hosted
online and students are expected to work
on a particular unit and they need to
learn the vocabulary they need to watch
my videos on grammar and language and
then they need to complete what I call
at home tasks these are generally rote
learning tasks and answers are provided
their activities that don't require a
teacher to be there students then learn
all the content they come to class they
sit a quick quiz this allows me to
assess the learning and then in class we
spend time on the explicit teaching of
skills with the videos I try as much as
I can to put my face in there because I
figured that students initially would
feel abandoned by me as in you know the
teachers not explaining anymore
so I thought it was really important to
have my face there so they felt that I
was still there with them when they were
at home going through my videos the
online learning site would help us fit
all the learning that we were meant to
have in class we could do it at home and
then we could ask the questions that we
didn't know to we could ask prof during
class time so that would save a lot of
time I consistently evaluate my online
my blended learning approach what I do
every two months even four years down
the track I sit with my students I and I
asked them for their feedback on the
course
the initial response to the blended
learning course was actually quite
negative when I explained the course to
my first cohort they were a bit puzzled
and they asked me so what are you going
to be doing if you're not teaching us so
I had to had that challenge to deal with
and initially there was a bit of
resistance for example I walked into
class one day they should have prepared
a particular unit and they had but they
wanted me to start every lesson with a
five-minute revision of the the of the
online unit and so I gave in one day and
I started writing on the board some
notes from the from from the unit and I
noticed the students getting their
phones out and taking photos of the
board and I stepped back and I looked at
the board and it was a mess
there was a spelling mistake and I had
forgotten you know five or six things
that were online and at that stage I
stopped and I said to the students girls
I did this online for you it was I had
different colors for different IDs and
concepts I didn't have any spelling
mistakes it was a lot more thorough I
spent about four hours doing this online
it's taken me three minutes and it shows
in class and it's when I realized that I
just had to change their attitude that
it was a cultural shift had to occur
over all this course and blended online
unit has been very very effective well I
think for myself it was very very
efficient I really enjoyed that it was
available to us at all times there was
there were recorded videos that we could
refer to whenever we needed help and
then we from this relate we were able to
utilize our class time to the best of
our abilities and get the most out of
our time
what I'd say to teachers who feel they
are challenged by online technology is
simply to give it a go it it looks a lot
harder than it actually is and there are
so many benefits to it my results have
improved considerably I have grown as a
teacher because I got to learn a new
skill and learning the new skill is very
exciting so I just say try it is it's
not as hard as you think it is
you