Welcome to the Advanced Math Flipped Classroom!

Dear Students, 

  I am going to teach this year using the flipped classroom infused with ed-tech. Here's a little background about why I am doing it and what exactly it is.

  In a flipped classroom, the teacher creates videos ahead of time and students work on problems in class. I had heard about this method for many years, but nothing attracted me to it. I enjoyed teaching. I liked to get students to discover ideas in class. The idea of watching students do homework in class did not appeal to me. I read books and scoured the internet for ideas to help with teaching during distance learning, but it was not until I read Stacey Roshan’s book, Tech with Heart: Leveraging Technology to Empower Student Voice, Ease Anxiety, and Create Compassionate Classrooms (2019), that I decided to try and completely change my traditional way of teaching to flipped learning with new technology.

    Roshan described the flipped classroom differently. First, she flipped with an advanced math class, which made me lean in. Second, she explained how she tended to be anxious when called on in class and preferred to process at home as a student. As a person who always had butterflies in my stomach when about to raise my hand, I related. She argued that when flipping, students can rewatch the video until they understand and process it at their own pace. She used ed tech to give a voice to passive learners, finding ways for them to share their thinking while reducing anxiety. She explained how she was able to empower students to “become active participants in their own learning rather than passive consumers of information” (Roshan, 2019, p. xiv). A game-changer is her use of Wacom Pen Tablets in her classroom. Students can plug this surface board directly into their laptop and use the pen to write and draw math on ed tech activities and notes rather than laboriously using a finger on a trackpad.

      My goals have always been to engage students by fostering their conversations about mathematics with each other, to create deeper learning, to lessen student anxiety, and to build a community of learners. It was a lofty goal even pre-Covid, but during the pandemic, conversations were mostly between me and a couple of students, students were rarely discussing math amongst their peers, I could not see their work, anxiety was at an all-time high, and students at home were isolated. Covid pushed me to look and see what else was out there, and I found this combined technique of flipped learning and ed-tech that seemed to be answering my concerns that I always had, but which Covid heightened.

       Through my capstone project for my EdD from the University of Miami, I am going to use Roshan’s method, intertwined with my 30 years of teaching advanced math, to develop a flipped learning class using ed-tech to teach a lesson on quadratics to my advanced math hybrid classes during second semester 2021. The hope is to continue using this method in all of my classes, teach my math colleagues how to use it, and perhaps teach those in other disciplines how to use it as well.

    Here is a video explaining the process. Feel free to reach out! I can't wait to teach you in this innovative new way!