What Are The Best Digital Tools For The Flipped Classroom?
Hafsa Wajeeh, dtopgadgets
Have you “Flipped your classroom” yet? The flipped classroom is a useful technique that has moved lectures out of the class, and onto digital media. In doing so, teachers can drastically increase interaction time with their students. It also creates two unique learning environments instead of just one, and opens up the opportunity for students to ask questions, solve problems, and use technology in a meaningful way.
A number of tools are available that can be used to record lectures, including YouTube, Edmodo, Schoology, and Moodle. No matter what tool you’re using, recording and uploading lectures, then hosting them for years to come has never been easier.
1. Panopto
The first tool is Panopto. It is one of the most widely used class capturing tools, used in many K-12 classrooms and universities. To use this, you’ll need a Panopto recorder installed on your classroom computer. With it you can easily record a class lecture, yourself, your PowerPoint presentations, and your screens. These recordings can then be uploaded to Canvas, and students can review these lectures later anytime they want.
If you are a teacher and you are using Panopto, you don’t have to worry about uploading your lectures because it is integrated to a Course Management System, Canvas. Before start recording, you can choose to add archive to your course folder, and when you are finished with recording it will automatically be added to your course folder. It also allows you to send a live feed of your lecture recordings to your students.
Panopto is as useful for students as it is for teachers. As a student, you can search any lecture using related keywords. You can also take your own notes in a better way because you have the option to pause the lecture anytime. In this way you can understand and concentrate on the lecture more easily while working at your own pace.
2. Tegrity
Tegrity is another great tool that is used for flipping the class. It records each and every activity that is performed on a teacher’s computer. Audio of the teacher can also be added by simply adding a microphone to the computer. If you add a web-cam, and a tablet you would be able to record the video of the teacher and his writing actions as well. Tegrity is also integrated with a Course Management System, Angel, so after completion of lecture recording, these are uploaded automatically for the students.
To use Tegrity, you don’t have to change your teaching style. As a teacher or instructor, you can manage the number of students you want to share the recording links with, and can delete the recordings whenever you want, or save them for future.
As a student, you have freedom to find a specific portion of a lesson, bookmark it, and you can also send electronic questions to your teachers. This tool helps you access materials easily, even from your smartphone.
Screencast-o-matic is a tool that helps a teacher in recording everything they do does on their computer. They can also add audio to the recording with the help of a microphone. This tool can be especially helpful when teaching involves modeling the use of online tools and resources as students can effectively watch over the shoulder of the teacher.
As a teacher you don’t have to install any software to use this tool, as it is run directly from the website. If you set up a free account on their website, you’ll get 15 minutes of free recording, video uploading, and you can directly publish the recorded material to YouTube. If you purchase Screencast-O-Matic, along with unlimited recording and editing, among other features.
This is one of the most popular class flipping tools, proving itself again and again in the classroom. With Camtasia, as a teacher you can integrate Power Point presentations, videos, flash cards, music, and even games to your lessons, or add different visual effects to them.
You can also edit your lessons that have been prepared using this tool. In the latest version of this high quality screen recorder, quiz creation and sharing has become even easier to boot.
5. Wikispaces
Wikispaces is an online tool that helps a teacher to prepare and save lessons online. This tool is being used by a number of teachers and institutions due to its simple interface and flexible use. And being free doesn’t hurt, either. If you are a teacher it would be a lot easier for you to use this tool then setting up your own website.
Image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad