TheFlippedScientist

Middle management, in a recent personal development session, was introduced to the research of John Hattie on effective teaching strategies in his publication  visible learning . In essence, Mr Hattie advocates that through the meta-analysis of thousands of educational research papers, certain interventions are more effective in the classroom than when compared to others. I have in previous posts linked to his research in support of certain teaching techniques like direct instruction. However recently, my colleague Ximena  brought to my attention some admissions around his methodology by Mr Hattie and with further reading of primary literature problems began to emerge. The aspect of Hattie's research that is being brought to the fore by policymakers and prominent educationalists is the effect size. A number greater than 0.4 is a highly effective intervention in the classroom as seen from the above chart.  So how did Mr Hattie come...

One of the problems of moving to China was leaving my senior physics and chemistry classes half way through their academic year. This, of course, caused me many a sleepless night on how I could supplement what their new teachers were doing in the classroom and help them pass their NCEA exams in November back in New Zealand when I was teaching in China with the 5 hour time difference. However, as I had already been flipping my junior classes from the previous year, I stumbled on a solution. I already had the power point presentations for the year set up and they had internet access back home in NZ, so I decided to create office mixes of the lessons and post to Youtube which allowed them easiest access. Essentially, office mix is an add on the Microsoft power point, where you can record yourself going through the slides and also record yourself actually demonstrating a few of the concepts, for example, electromagnetic induction with a magnet and a cop...

I was just about to close my computer the last Friday of the term and I received a tweet from Kristina Miguel  suggesting I enrol for #ditchsummit .  The Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit was a nine-day, virtual event which brought together some of the brightest minds in education to discuss technology, pedagogy, inquiry and more. Being the sucker I am for learning of course I enrolled. Who needs a Christmas break anyway when you can learn! The first keynote was from Mike Soskil  discussing the use of Skype in the classroom to build global connections, so far so good. The second keynote was from Kasey Bell  discussing the use of google apps in the classroom, useful for those new to google in education. Then came the keynote from Alice Keller  and that is where it got really interesting for me. Alice's message was dealing with homework and whether it was of any use or needed to be re-evaluated. I disagreed with parts of Alice...

From the sage on the stage to take the not knowing position, these phrases permeate education. We as educators move from one approach to the next in an attempt to improve the educational opportunities for our learners. One of the ideas that have been embraced in the last 30 years has been that of student centred learning. The term student - centred learning refers to a wide variety of learning experiences and instructional approaches that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students. The underlying assumption being by incorporating the interests of the learners and having them drive their education, that instruction will be more authentic, increasing engagement and hence enhancing the learning happening in class. This term is now synonymous with good teaching practice, but does the evidence stack up? Morgan et al (2014)  investigated the effect of different t...

Since the 1950s, virtual reality (VR) has been on the edge of educational technology without entering the mainstream. The most common use of this emergent technology has been gaming and entertainment and high-end consumer products. My experiences in China though suggest the world is changing.  Recently, I have begun incorporating more VR into my classroom to introduce abstract scientific concepts like the atom. I have discovered that VR can be a useful tool, allowing students to visualise complicated ideas in new ways. The potential returns in education are immense, and I believe one of the countries embracing this technology and moving it into the mainstream is China. China’s growing and affluent middle class have already embraced mobile technology and are well on the way to welcoming the VR revolution, creating exciting new opportunities in education. VR has gone from being merely a gimmick for the entertainment industry to providi...

As part of the #EdbookNZ challenge for connected educators month 2016 , I have been kindly asked by @vanschaijik to blog about a topic in education. This year the topic is b uzz words in teaching. I encourage comments that disrupt what I have written, which you can do in the comments section. So after much thought, I have chosen the buzzword of 'adaptive technologies' to see how it really stacks up against my most favourite of words - evidence . Our world is experiencing an evolution in adaptive technologies. Adaptive technologies are systems that adapt to us as individuals. Such systems are ubiquitous like using the smartphone app Didi Chuxing to hail a cab here in China. So with the spread of adaptive technologies, it is not surprising that they are increasingly found in education. At present, the standard classroom is still like the one below, the teacher sta...