I have been making videos for about three years now and am convinced of the benefits. I have run professional development sessions at my school over the years. They have been well received and teachers have been keen to start making videos too. However, in most cases, teachers haven’t started. The learning curve and fear of recording their voice and face create significant inertia for many teachers. Here is a list of ways that are sure to get teachers to start making videos and start flipping.
- Build it and they will come
Make a studio at school and leave it set up so that teachers can drop in during a spare and record without the hassle of setting up.
- Launch your studio
Ask the principal to officially open the studio and endorse it. Hold a launch event where teachers can play around with the studio.
- Run workshops
Ask the teachers to come to the workshop with an idea for a video. Show them how to do it and then let them create the magic. You will be on hand to help and guide.
- Produce the videos for the teachers- initially.
Encourage your colleagues to make one video and flip one lesson. They will come back wanting more. By producing their first video for them, it removes the technology barrier.
- Outsource video post-production- to your students
I am sure that every school, high school at least, has students who are experts at video post-production. Ask them to help the teachers. The students could be incentivized with rewards. For example, produce ten videos and get a cinema ticket, twenty videos and earn an iTunes voucher.
- Make video production a subject or unit
Make video production a unit or subject and have the students produce videos for teachers as their project.
- Hold drop in sessions
Make yourself available one hour a week or fortnight after school for teachers to drop in and work on their videos.
- Incentivise the teachers
Hold a competition between different faculties. Which faculty can make the most videos in a month? Or, which faculty can have the most staff make videos in a month?
- Make videos with a friend
Take on the role of the inquiring student and ask the teacher to explain a concept. It is more like having a conversation.
As a school, identify those meta-concepts and skills that cross the curriculum areas. Then seek out the school expert to make a video with. For example, exponentials are relevant for biology, ecology, geography, business, finance and so on, but the math teachers are the experts at teaching exponentials. So make a video with the math expert and explain how it relates to other disciplines. Videos of meta-concepts and skills can be used across faculties and year levels.
- Keep it simple
You are likely to scare off most teachers by introducing them to chroma key green screen videoing first up. Start simple with screen capture of voice-over power point.
- Make a lightboard
Teachers are pretty used to lecturing in front of a whiteboard. Stand them in front of a lightboard, and they can do the same thing. Check out this post for ideas https://flippedlearning.org/how_to/how-to-make-a-lightboard-for-less-than-100/.
- Leaders lead by example
Encourage and facilitate the school leadership team to make some videos, especially faculty or department heads.
- Get your admin team to go to a flipped learning conference
If you can get your admin team to attend a flipped learning conference like FlipCon, they will definitely be inspired into action. You can’t help but be inspired hearing from Jon Bergmann, Aaron Sams and the local flipped education gurus.
- Find a wingman (or wing-person)
Create a PLC (Professional Learning Community) of like-minded teachers and inspire, motivate and support each other.
Please share any other ideas you have tried or want to try and please let me know what worked best for your school.
