3 Ways To “Flip” Instruction

If you read last week’s post about Classroom Flipping and are curious to give it a try, here are several ways that you could record a lesson for students.

Preparing	Before recording a “flipped” lesson, plan carefully what you want to teach so that you can record the lesson in one take and avoid the need for editing afterwards. You may want to prepare visuals ahead of time so that the lesson can progress quickly and smoothly. So long as the lesson is clear, you do not need to be concerned about moving too quickly or leaving wait time because students can pause the lesson whenever they choose. For my class, I made jot notes of the lesson sequence, and used PowerPoint slides for visuals to annotate during the lesson.
Recording	SMART Recorder + SMART Board SMART Recorder is “screencast” software bundled with SMART Board Tools. Open SMART Notebook, then right click the toolbar, and drag the video camera icon to your toolbar. Click that buttion to open SMART Recorder. Press the red button to begin recording. The down arrow beside the record button will control whether SMART Recorder will record the whole screen, or just part of it along with your audio. When finished, press the square stop button. You can choose where to save your video file. If audio is not correctly recorded, double click the speaker icon in the system tray (lower right corner of the screen) to adjust audio properties. Make sure the microphone is checked as a recording source, and that the volume is not zero. The SMART Board and microphone in the Library conference room can be used for recording with this method.	CamStudio + Airliner This is the method I used. The free “screencast” software CamStudio captures microphone sound and any region of a computer screen to create a video. Steps: 1. Download from camstudio. org 2. Set options. I used: Compressor: Microsoft Video 1 Frame Rate: Auto Adjust Record to AVI (button bar) 3. Click Options > “Record Audio From Microphone” 4. Minimize CamStudio 5. Press F8 to Start or Pause recording 6. Press F9 to finish and save AVI file. I also used an Airliner tablet to be able to write on the screen while recording. If you would like to borrow an Airliner for home use or a laptop to try with CamStudio that could be arranged. The Airliner is very portable, but also takes some practice to work on hand-eye coordination. CamStudio is very flexible, but a little complicated, so next time I might use SMART Recorder instead. SMART Notebook and SMART Board tools are available for home install. Please speak with me for a license key.	Other Alternatives Online Recording The web-based Screencast-O-Matic (www.screencast-o-matic.com) tool is very easy to use. The free version has two minor limitations: recordings have a “Screencast-O-Matic” logo, and are limited to 15 minutes. Flipped lesson videos should be about 5-10 minutes, so the length restriction is not a problem. iPad Recording Explain Everything is an iPad screencast app (www. explaineverything. com). It works well, is very portable, and at $3 it is a very affordable way to screencast … so long as you already own the iPad. For more resources see: bit.ly/K5SJF4 Document Camera Recording Directing a a document camera (or web cam) at a piece of paper is a simple option. Start a recording program, then write on the page while you narrate the lesson. The ELMO and IPEVO document cameras, as well as most web cams, come with recording software. Use Existing Video TED Ed (ed.ted.com), Learn 360, Learner.org, and Discovery Streaming, have thousands of excellent and curricularly relevant videos.
Disseminating	One of the most frustrating things I have found when working with video is the wide variety of file formats which can cause compatibility issues when playing videos on different devices. My solution was YouTube. YouTube will accept videos in many formats, and will automatically convert them for viewing online. YouTube works on computers and mobile devices, and videos stream right away so that students do not have to download a large file before beginning to watch. With a tool likeVideo Download Helper or Online Convert ( http://www.online-convert.com), students can download videos for offline viewing too. To upload videos to YouTube you will need to sign in with (or create) a Google Account. Privacy permissions can be set when uploading videos. I set mine so that anyone can view videos if they know the link, but links are not public. I made these essentially private videos available to students by linking to them from the class Moodle. Here is an example:bit.ly/K5Yhzr