The basics of flipping instruction – engagement and differentiation

This school year I am back with an Economics class of my own and have a chance to put lots of the great ideas I am learning as a Digital Literacy Coach into practise.

A great hint I learned last year from a colleague Steve Vorster at UWCSEA, is to repurpose a Google Form to help students engage with a simple video tutorial. YouTube is full of tutorials on Economics and it is easy to point kids to great playlists from Jodi Beggs the EconGirl or Jason Welker. The struggle is getting students to engage and to elicit some feedback on their level of understanding.

The trick is to find a suitable video. In this case I introduced the basics of demand to my Grade 11 class, and needed something to consolidate their understanding. As this class already has a good grounding in Economics from GCSE last year I can’t spend weeks explaining each determinate but would prefer that students recap at their own pace.

Linking Google Form and YouTube

Google Forms are a simple way to collect some feedback. Create one from your Google Drive, then play the video whilst waiting for a few key points. I try to develop “hinge questions” which really highlight if the student gets a concept, these are explained in the work of educationalist Dylan Wiliam. Less questions the better !

This week Google Forms was updated so you can embed a video directly into the form. Once you have finished share with your students for homework. The feedback spreadsheet of student responses is a great discussion starter/plenary at the beginning of the next lesson.

Google Forms can now be shared with colleagues so others can reuse and recycle your task. Just remember your colleague needs to make a copy of your form.  Whilst this isn’t revolutionary it is just a nice example of repurposing a few tech tools to make learning a little more interesting and effective, it sure beats reading the textbook each week.