Flipping at Mercy

Looking back on this past school year, I think we made our smoothest and most profound technology transition. We adopted Schoology as our new Learning Management System based on the study and recommendation of a large, open committee of teachers, administrators and staff. One of the great advantages of this LMS is the performance of its iPad app.

Most of our teachers did a great job of leveraging this platform to allow for 24/7 learning.  In this 1:20 minute video, a student and teacher describe the advantages of "Flipping the Classroom" which allows students to engage with content outside of the classroom and take advantage of classroom time by diving deeper or asking questions (rather than taking notes on lectures).

Schoology allowed Mrs. Scrimscher to continue instruction and interaction with her class, even though she could not attend school for periods of time. iPad apps like ShowMe and Explain Everything have proven to be terrifically useful for the creation of "flipped" materials.

Recorded by Gary Bank; edited by Larry Baker

Ten Things for Three Labs

As I recently wrote in Experimenting with a Google Apps Lab, Mercy's approach to professional development has recently shifted from presentations and workshops to one-to-one help in "labs". Our first lab ooh place during our Final Exam period and focused on Google Calendars and Google Sites. We had 8 volunteer trainers and about 35 attendees, which I considered a terrific success.

Last week, week we held our first lab during summer vacation. Again this was very well attended and we had seven volunteer trainers. This lab and the ensuing July and August labs will focus on specific skills that we wish all teachers to possess by the beginning of the next school year. In fact fellow Associate Principal, Colleen Rozman, and I wrote some instructional modules for our staff. Colleen was the chief architect and modeled the approach after the Learning 2.0 Program (conceived by Helene Bowers). Here is a condensed version of the skills that our program includes

• Setting up and Organizing a Moodle Page
• Creating and posting a Google Calendar
• Using the iPad to take a photo, edit it and post it
• Shooting, editing and sharing a movie
• Using Evernote
• Creating a document with CloudOn and sharing it through Dropbox
• Creating a video explanation with ShowMe or Explain Everything
• Communicating through Google Groups

These tasks created some fun activity at our very well attended lab. Staff plunged into the skills and received significant individual attention. As a trainer, I can attest that I learned a number of "tips", too. I continue to be impressed by how determined most of my colleagues are to prepare for our shift to Mercy 2.0. I am already looking forward to our next lab in July. . . . But now I have to get back to my own "Ten Things"!

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Screen Shot from Mercy "10 Things"