Resources for Flipped Professional Development

Video Transcription

Hello there and welcome. With so many resources out there to learn from and teach with, a little preview of some of the most popular ones can help. So in this lesson we will look at different resources for use in developing flipped professional development through various platforms. So let's get to it with some of my favorites.

Sophia, Edmodo, and Schoology are all flipped PD platforms that let you develop competency based flipped lessons for free. You even have the option to include quizzes, documents, links, and videos. If you're working with a group of students or even adult learners, these tools allow you to create professional learning groups that will help you monitor the progress of members. With Sophia, content can be saved and viewed by others, which means by conducting a simple search, you can find other professional learning activities that have been created and shared by educators globally. By seeing what other users have rated the lesson or video, it can help guide your learning. Although primarily designed for use by teachers with their students, Schoology can also be used for adults and their professional learning as well.

Weebly also has a free version, but there are some differences between it and the other three. Weebly gives users the ability to embed videos, forms as quizzes, documents, links, and other resources. Weebly can help you develop flipped professional learning activities that can easily be shared and accessed. Another feature of Weebly that educators enjoy is social networking for teachers to share practices and resources with each other. Now we will look at some tools that can help you create video content for use with students or to use as part of professional development. This reminds me of how recently our school purchased new copy machines. Rather than send out written directions on how to use it, I just created a 30 second video and emailed it to the staff. It was simple, engaging, and effective. Unlike years ago, videos for flipped professional development can be created through screencasts or digital camera applications at no or low cost. Some of these applications include the following. Jing is a free tool offered by TechSmith that lets you take a screen shot or a screen cast of up to five minutes. The video you create, however, must be shared through a link, not an embedded code. Another tool by TechSmith is called Snagits. Snagits is a low cost video editing and screencasting tool. And like with most tools used in schools, they offer significant discounts for educators. The videos you create are able to be saved as MP4s; or you can upload them directly to YouTube. Snagits is very intuitive and user friendly.

For you Mac users out there, you're probably already familiar with iMovie. IMovie allows you to edit videos and screencasts with these. There are also some screencasting tools readily available on iOS devices that you will want to check out, including Educreations, Knowmia, ShowMe, and Doodlecast Pro. Once you get comfortable with any one of these tools, it continues to get easier with the next.

There are also times you'll want to use existing videos to deliver content and information, and those can be embedded directly into your presentations as well. Here are some resources that you can use to access professional learning videos. YouTube is more than a place to see videos of cats playing the piano and people falling off bikes. YouTube is an endless source for professional content that could be found simply by searching the expert or the strategy. Once you find what you are looking for, copy and embed the code into one of the platforms that we mentioned above.

Teaching channel is another great place find videos of practices, strategies, theory, and research-- all about education. There are a wide array of videos that can be used as components of any type of professional learning. And Ted Talks-- I think they're great. They can be informative, inspirational, and very entertaining. They are videos of leading experts in the field, giving five to 10 minute talks on a topic. These can also be embedded as part of your flipped lesson.

And now for today's food for thought. You have a lot to think about. Have fun exploring. And for even more information, check out the additional resources section that accompany this presentation. The additional resources section include hyperlinks, useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.