Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Classroom What is Flipped Learning - Is it really a new concept? Have you watched a YouTube video to learn a new skill and then fixed your car, sketched a portrait or baked a cake? How many times did you pause and rewind different parts of the clip? The biggest advantage of flipped learning is that 'You can pause and rewind your teacher.' Flipped learning is not a new concept, nor is it about filming every lesson and publishing it online for the children to view prior to coming to class. Believe it or not we have been flipping our classrooms for years - sending home a passage of text to read, researching a point in history or practising multiplication tables. This is all learning outside the classroom - at home, on the bus, before a dance class or football practise. Flipped learning enables children to complete the knowledge and understanding aspects of a learning journey OUTSIDE of class time. They are then ready to apply, analyse and evaluate the concepts INSIDE the classroom. The traditional method of ‘chalk and talk’ and the perception of the teacher as a ‘font of all knowledge’ is removed completely. The teacher’s role is to engage the children in higher-order thinking. Let’s flip Blooms Taxonomy.

Free Applications Something free in education (well in life) is not to be sniffed at, but it’s not very often we get given something for free without a catch. Well, luckily technology throws up something every now and again, which is catch free. We’re going to look through a few applications that will have a big impact in your classroom and of course, won’t cost your school a penny.

Education is changing, or is it? Education is changing and technology seems to driving this forward in many ways, but we seem to be held back by past decision with our buildings, infrastructure and methods of teaching. The way our classrooms are set out, usually with four walls, a huge window, poor lighting, whiteboard at the front and even rooms with a teacher's desk at the front. Children will face the teacher, the teacher has the knowledge and the children will sit quietly, listen and learn from the teacher. Why do we still do this, when children now have access to more knowledge in their pockets than they have ever done? The introduction of smart phones in classrooms is something that still needs to be developed further in schools. We still ban devices in school when instead we should be using them to learn. Systems need to be put into place to allow children of all ages to utilise the technology, and in most cases it is better than what we have in schools. Yes, the children may text or use Instagram, but don’t we when we’re in the process of learning? Short brain breaks to check the news, weather, or the now unfashionable Facebook? Give the children time in the lesson to do just this and then the technology becomes part of everyday learning, a tool to be used with a multitude of uses in and outside the classroom. We need to start looking ahead and redesigning our schools and what they look like. Believe it or not we could create something stunning by investing in only a few key pieces and taking some risks to try and make our schools more fluid places to learn. Investing in a large hammer, some new plaster, thinking walls, better Internet infrastructure, a watertight e-safety policy and an acceptable use policy. So where do we begin?

Giving children a reason to use technology. I've been striving to make sure that the children have real connected purposes for learning in our classroom this year, as linking as many skills from as many subjects in one project is so very important. I feel this is essential for learning in every classroom, whether in Primary or Secondary schools. Children need to see the point of learning these skills - "what are people using these skills for right now in the world and what can I use them for?" Thinking more about the outcome and then working backwards to find the skills needed, is something we need to do more in our schools. Don't ruin the surprise for the children; allow the learning to be a surprise.

Do we buy technology in schools without questioning why? How many times have you been amazed by a piece of technology? If you're like me, then quite often! I love technology, I love the way it has changed the way I work, how it has inspired me and how it has enabled me to publish things I never thought possible 10 years ago. Now, let's look at the children in my class, the digital natives. The technology has always been there, they've never been in a classroom without an interactive whiteboard, laptops, iPads or a projector whirring away in the background. But how much of this technology has been used to improve their learning outcomes? Using technology in the classroom needs a complete change in mindset and rethink of your approach to children's learning.

A short user guide or handout for setting up your flipped classroom

Here is a complete CPD Presentation based around the theory of Flipped Learning Have you watched a YouTube video to learn a new skill and then fixed your car, sketched a portrait or baked a cake?  How many times did you pause and rewind different parts of the clip?  The biggest advantage of flipped learning is that 'You can pause and rewind your teacher.'   Flipped learning enables children to complete the knowledge and understanding aspects of a learning journey OUTSIDE of class time. They are then ready to apply, analyse and evaluate the concepts INSIDE the classroom.

Where did we begin? Setting the scene. There are many examples of schools using 1:1 iPads, ChromeBooks etc, but I wanted our 1:1 project to be tailored specifically to our school. One of the main points to consider is - it really needs to be personalised; there is no one size fits all approach here. What our school requires from them will differ greatly from what other schools want out of them. There is no right or wrong way to implement them and the outcome will greatly influence how you proceed with other classes in your school. My Year 4 classroom was the research class for this project for a term and a half and we have a firm plan for September on how we will transfer them to the next teacher. I'm confident that the children were making the most use out of the iPads in my Year 4 class and as Computing leader; I will need to ensure they keep that level of use in Year 5 and beyond. How will they cope at high school, if they don't have a 1:1 iPad scheme? An interesting thought to consider.

Our classrooms need to change because learning doesn’t stop when the end of the school day arrives. Children need a place to communicate their thoughts, process ideas and have their questions answered immediately, not have to wait for the next day to see their teacher. We live in a world that is dominated by the need for instant communication and information at our fingertips; schools can no longer just be a physical place to learn, they need to be up in the cloud as well. Children need to be able to access their work, submit their learning and receive feedback, all on their own time – children are busy curious creatures after all! Up step Edmodo - Social Media for Education. This really was a game changer for my Year 3 flipped classroom. It was dubbed "Facebook for kids," by the children in my class and they love it and the oppportunites that it has provided for them. Edmodo is a 'work flow' solution for classrooms and it allows children to share work online, receive feedback, edit, and publish again.

With the announcement of Microsoft’s purchase of Minecraft EDU, we know that this addictive game is going to be around for much longer now we can access it in schools safely and easily. Many colleagues I’ve met have shunned the idea of using what is ultimately ‘a game’ in the classroom, but after watching how engaged the children who are playing it are, we’ve got to tap into that engagement; haven’t we? Of course we have. I've being playing around with the idea of using MinecraftEDU in school for a while now and this term I'm finally going to start crafting in class. But how can it inspire my children to create, test, explain, solve problems and work collaboratively? I'm lucky to have a 7-year-old son at home who has started this journey with me and together we've come up with some super ideas for how we could use Minecraft at school. I managed to survive my first night on Survival mode and I'm now the proud owner of several diamonds, crafted myself a diamond sword (my son was very jealous), but I did unfortunately die when lava fell on my head - don't mine vertically, lesson learned

Children Creating Maths Calculation Video Guides So, you’ve just sat down to mark those thirty or so maths books and you come across one child’s book in particular that interests you greatly – you can’t quite work out where they’ve gone wrong or how they’ve arrived at the answer. You need the child, but they’re not here, they’re at home – how inconvenient! I’ve been in this situation so many times with children’s work, particularly in mathematics. You really haven’t got the time to leave the marking and come back to it in the morning, so what can you do? Teaching children how to use apps like Explain Everything and Vittle has been a great success in my Year 4 class and has gone someway to solving this problem. Screencasting is fast becoming a big part of daily classroom life. Teaching the children how to use this skill to drive their learning forward independently is having a real impact in our classroom. I’ve been using video and screencasting as part of our flipped classroom but I've always produced the videos for the children. I'll certainly keep doing this as I've found it incredibly useful as it allows children to find their next steps and to know which challenge they are attempting when they arrive at school. The children have been using Edmodo recently to save and collect work and information and then store it in their online 'backpack,' Edmodo's version of the cloud. They have found this incredibly useful as they are not losing documents and can post work simply from their backpack without searching for it. It also allows you to link your Google Drive account, which I have found incredibly useful. Easily share work from my library/backpack with the children. So why ask the children to start creating their own videos and how did we do it?

5 ways in which ‘Learning in the Cloud’ can impact your classroom Learning in the cloud has been gathering pace in schools across the world and is something that every school should be embracing. Mell, P. & Grance, T. (2009) in The NIST definition of cloud computing, ver. 15. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Information Technology Laboratory states that: “Cloud learning is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable learning resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal teaching effort or learning provider interaction” The stand out word in that quote is ‘convenient.’ In whatever role you have, if something is not convenient or simple to use, then the impact will be lessened. Cloud learning is convenient and something that can truly help personalise the learning experience for the children in your school. So, what applications do you need? How can you get started and what will it cost? We will have a look at five ways in which learning in cloud can be used in your day to day teaching and what impact it could have.

“What have you done at school today?” Using Technology to Communicate with Parents. How does your school communicate with stakeholders? How often do you do it? When is the best time to do it? All things we've considered at school and questions that we hoped we've answered, but we're always evolving and so are methods of communication. Whether it is a detailed newsletter each week or regular updates on Twitter and Facebook, letting your parents' know what is going on in schools is essential in our modern and busy world. As parents we tend to ask our children what they've done at school when they get home - the classic answer "I don't know, I can't remember." So how do we help parents get their children talking at home about their learning? Getting the children engaged in talking about something they've done in school can help them further understand a concept or to tackle any misconceptions that they've got around a certain subject. Parents want to know.

Coding in the Classroom: Logic, Creativity and Problem Solving. Since September schools across the country have been coming to terms with the fact that Computer Science has been made compulsory under the new national curriculum. The introduction of this new curriculum has turned computing sessions on their head in primary schools – no longer are we teaching children how to use applications, we are now tasked with teaching children how to create them. Schools still have an obligation to give children opportunities to present their work using various methods like digital photography, film and presentations, but the one area that has caused so much discussion amongst colleagues across the country has been the requirement for children to learn how to write computer code. Children need to recognise that it is not some sort of ‘magic’ but a programmable device that people manipulate to get what they want. Teaching children how to create their own games, websites, animations and applications has been something that has been missing for many years in schools and is something that holds huge possibilities, not only for children now, but also for the future world. Try to think of a job or object in our modern lives that doesn’t involve some sort of technology and some sort of programming that is either part of it or has been part of producing it. Quite tough. Our world is now dependent on technology and the software that runs on those devices, but worryingly only a few of use know how they work - we are facing a future with a lack of computer engineers and the introduction of the new computing curriculum is certainly a step towards solving this problem