Hey everyone, welcome back to another week of The future of education! This week I am going to talk about how I teach.
I teach children aged 7-9 years old and they are a bunch of creative, critical thinking and keen students. So, trying to keep these guys up to date and engaged with their education can be super tricky, especially as it is all online! However, I have found the flipped classroom approach to be the most successful. The flipped classroom approach involves students, learning valuable information through 
videos, Ted-talks or webinars that they watch and engage with through collaborative and individual posts and presentations.
The videos and ted-talks that the students watch are all hand picked by myself and I do pop into them virtually, to make sure that the class understand something or tell them to pause and write key information down and come back to the video later. The best thing about this though, I don’t have to create the videos every week! I get videos from other people and guest lectures so it helps the class get a good understanding of the topic and it’s not just me talking at them for 30 minutes every video.
Here is Khan (2011) https://youtu.be/nTFEUsudhfs?t=369 discussing the benefits of online videos used in the classroom, however it is more advanced today but they were differently onto something back then!
I find this way of teaching very effective, as Winter (2018) suggested students do learn through active activities and it makes them critical thinking and they begin to engage with each other and their teamwork skills are enhanced.
The videos for each session are made readily available for the students on a Monday morning and their work is handed in then on a Friday afternoon, or sometimes the following Friday depending on the topics.
Throughout the week, the students and I are involved in group discussions on the topics in chat rooms and discussion forums. McLoughlin & Mynard (2009 cited by Ebrahumi, Fagihi & Dabir- Moghaddam 2017) suggests that online discussion forums create students who are more critical thinking and have enhanced thinking skills. I do a webinar on a Wednesday and I have individual online VR meetings with students in my office (well actually from the comfort of my living room) if they are struggling or need my support. It is extremely important to me that I know all my students and that we have a good teacher-student relationship. Anyway, this method of communicating is very helpful and it keeps us all in the loop together as a class as Parks (2010 cited by Ebrahumi, Fagihi & Dabir- Moghaddam 2017) comments on online discussion forums being a supportive environment that gives a class a sense of community.
Cya, same time next week.
thefutureofeducation.