Is anyone experienced in this
A video explanation is here
Oh my god! This looks like the best thing ever! I would miss 3 robotics meetings for my school to do this! (Maybe only 2…)
Seriously, this is genius! Why isn’t this implemented in every school!?
Thanks SO much for posting! I’m sending it to my teachers and school administration!
It IS great. We sometimes do this at work. I work in the training department of a car company, and students (dealer technicians) complete a series of eLearnings - essentially online lectures and demonstrations - and then come to class to do the hands-on and experiential learning using the background from the eLearnings.
In an adult learning environment, it is easier to get students to watch the online stuff, since they are motivated - they know learning will help them make more money and keep their jobs secure. In a youth learning environment motivation is much more difficult.
When done well - and this isn’t easy - it works great. It is a tremendous effort to create the online pieces and keep them updated. But when done poorly, it produces very poor results.
My AP Chemistry teacher used this system to teach the class last year. On paper, it sounded great. In reality, many of us didn’t watch the lectures (some of them seemed rather drawn out) and talked through class. Although the times I used class time to ask questions about the reading/lecture and get help with homework really helped.
oh, and doing the homework assignments in class means less homework to do before/after robotics 
We’re using this in my Intro to Electrical Engineering class this semester.
It’s working great for me. If I didn’t catch something the first time on the videos, I can just go back and get that watch that part again. If the teacher is talking too slow, I can speed up the video in Windows Media Player. I feel like I’m taking better notes with this method.
It’s also great during class because we aren’t just being talked at for 50 minutes. We’re doing work at our own pace, getting help when we need it, and ultimately understanding the material better.
This lone reason is why ever school in the world should do this! It also is a step up in responsibility for the students. So I would like to see this used in an “advanced course”, for students who can actively watch the lectures and do the work in class. I know it sounds great, but like mentioned already, some people won’t follow. That’s sad, but having it in an “advanced class” would be a solution I would love to see in my school by next year.
I say “Advanced class” not to mean it is AP/Honors (though it could), just a class different from the average class. Maybe you need to be of certain qualifications to take it, I don’t know.
I know for sure, though, that tomorrow I’ll be talking to each of my teachers about this! I love it!
In theory, this system sounds perfect, but I think many of us on CD have tunnel vision. Many, if not most people aren’t as drawn to learning for the sake of learning, and these are the people who won’t listen to lectures online, and won’t do anything in class. Atleast before they got some instruction in class. The other issue is the length. While I do have 2-3 hours of homework a night, I don’t expect 45 minutes from each class. If the lectures are online, I absolutely must watch 6 hours of content per evening. Thats a lot of time. A hybrid, in which small lessons are taught in class, to keep the online ones short, would be optimum.
However, for those who do like this approach, and whos schools don’t offer it, I highly suggest Khan Academy. It was founded by a man named Saul Khan, who’s mission is to make knowledge available to anyone and everyone. However, for those who it is already available to (us), it is a fantastic way to learn something your teacher didn’t teach or review for a test.
thanks for posting this,
I can’t wait to use it myself. I am going to make a series of programming videos to teach how to program in java. I was going to use screen casting software but not that i see this, it maybe easier.
Thanks a lot and i might make a series for the robotics team concerning mechanical of how a basic robot works in theory.
I got so many ideas already but just gotta do them:D
Something to think about if you are going to produce lessons in programming.
Maybe the lessons should be short, really short, two or three minutes - little lesson’lets - that address a specific topic, with animation. For example a lesson’let could cover the ‘for’ loop. Then the student goes off and does ‘for’ loop exercises.
got to be short !
PLEASE post the programming videos! I think it would be interesting if someone made videos in a similar way of Khan Academy for the science and math behind different parts of the robot. Like, the physics, the math used, etc. It could cover various topics in small 2-3 minute videos!
I would do these myself, but I don’t know all of the things (yet).
Any takers? Ether? 
This seems reasonable, but would still be limited to schools who are already the most likely to succeed due to integration of technology. To really get that 3,200 students/day dropout rate down, we’d have to focus on doing this in school that are well below average in the usual metrics. Typically those schools do not have a high enough percentage of students that have access to the technology in order to mandate students view an online video at home. Thus, the goal presented in the infographic of ‘flipping the classroom’ will be a pipe dream until that issue is addressed (just like many, many other great education ideas).
If the videos are short enough (5-10 minutes), then why not just show them at the beginning of class and then proceed with the interactive activities from there?
It also sounds like a good partnership and strategy for the Khan Academy to generate revenue to sustain & expand their online lectures.
You, sir, are a genius! That is a great idea! I wonder if Khan academy already knows about it.
Consider that the online videos also need to be better written and spoken than your average classroom lecture. I think the only thing that could be more boring than that monotonous teacher’s lecture is having to sit at home and watch it for an hour when the entire internet is calling, all my friends want to go out and do stuff etc. Also consider the format, I’ve had a lot of math/science classes that felt doing HW online would be great, unfortunately it turns 15 minutes of work into an hour trying to get the technology to do what was really simple to do with pencil and paper.
These videos are great! I use them all the time for statistics, calculus, and used them for advanced math in high school!
This sounds quite a bit like something I’m trying to put together for my junior project at WPI. Details, and approval, are yet to be determined, but stay tuned…
Another enhancement for video lectures: cross-linking. When given a video lecture, you can’t ask it for clarification; you can only play it again and again, and hope it sinks in. But what if there was some way to tell the video “Can you tell me more about that?” or “What does that word mean?”, which would link to another video that explains it! I imagine the ideal video-lecture system to resemble a web, rather than a linear set of videos, where students can move around the web in the pace and direction they want, learning what they need to know.
I am doing this in for my classes this year. (I did it some last year as an experiment, and this year I am trying to do a more detailed analysis of its effectiveness.) And have a colleague who has been doing it for a while. It works, sort of. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea and it has real advantages, but as an every day thing I don’t think it works as well as some of its proponents believe.
Most of the problems have already been mentioned here. When kids don’t watch the lessons in the evening, they aren’t ready to do work in class. I have found that if I keep the videos to 10-12 minutes or less the kids will watch them. Sometimes this means breaking my 40 minute lecture into 2 or 3 pieces. I have also found that some subjects are just too complicated to be explained effectively in a video. For those I will try to lay the groundwork in a short video and then do the main lecture in class. This is particularly true for topics that really require discussion in order to be effectively learned. I have found that for math and CS classes “flipping the classroom” some of the time is effective and gives me more time to work with students while they are working, rather than just listening to me talk.
On a related note, one thing a lot of my colleagues (and I) are doing is recording (in some fashion or other) our lectures. Whether this is a digital recording or a PDF of all of the work done on the smart board, we save it each day and post it to our web pages. This gives students “back up” for their notes. They often remark that seeing the sample problems in class worked out again (often with rewind involved) at their own pace is helpful.
Several teachers I know who try to flip the classroom use a Wiki or a Moodle page to accomplish this webbing. It is particularly useful if you tag the video files.
I implement a low-tech version of this in some of my classes based on the “West Point Model”. Instead of online videos, it uses an archaic and outmoded technology from the Dark Ages known as “books”.
Kids read and take notes on the topic of study (which includes sample problems). Class time is for questions from them on what they read, and problem sets wherein they can get help.
I’d love to do the actual West Point Model, but could never get away with it…