What is the flipped classroom?

Flipped learning or flipped classroom refers to a teaching form that flips the traditional teaching structure. 

How, though? Traditional teaching usually requires students to listen and stay passive in class as the teacher presents their material, and afterwards, the students do their homework actively at home. In a flipped classroom, students watch teacher-produced material at home where they can pause, skip or go back in the material any time they please, and then work on collaborative assignments in class.

Did you know that Lake Superior College saw a 70% decrease in IT support tickets after implementing Airtame? Learn more here. 

More control

In a flipped classroom, students have more control over their own learning. They are given the freedom to study at their own pace at home and take the time they need to understand difficult topics before asking questions in class. 

Student-centered

The whole point to a flipped classroom is going from a top-down teacher-centric approach to a pedagogical shift that puts students in center. By allowing students to collaborate and participate in their own learning, students can feel encouraged about their own education and at best help them stay devoted. 

Online access

Because classes and tutorials are online, there are no excuses to stay up to date with the most recent class material and homework. It means students can catch up easily and it gives them a lot of flexibility. It could also eliminate the need for many heavy paper-based books. Online access gives parents a better insight into what lectures their children are watching or have missed.

What’s in it for students

What it means for students is that they can get all the help they need when they’re doing their ‘homework’, because it’s happening when they’re in school. They can ask their classmates for help, and they won’t get left behind.

The best part is that all students don’t have to follow the same goal. It fosters personalized learning and a less stressful environment.

Parkland School District amplifies the student voice with Airtame. See how right here. 

What’s in it for teachers

For teachers, it results in much more freedom because they’re no longer in the center. They don’t have to concentrate on delivering all the answers and information on the spot but can help students search for them. It’s also easier to set up goals and success criteria as teachers can monitor students’ progress in class rather than trying to assess it from the traditional form of homework.

Downsides to flipped learning

Done properly, the flipped classroom can provide a strengthened learning environment where teachers can focus on the individual and students get more free time and flexibility. There are some cons to the process, however. 

First of all, teachers have to trust that students prepare and study at home. Without a dedicated preparation, teachers can’t go over the same material as the class can’t follow the lecture. 

Moreover, the flipped classroom relies on some sort of tech inclusivity. Meaning that students who aren’t necessarily as tech-savvy as their peers or don’t own the same equipment in a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environment might get left behind. It’s important to think about what technological implementation everyone, no matter their background, will be able to use and understand. 

Airtame is a BYOD inclusive, wireless screen sharing tool. We cater to K12, higher education, and universities alike. 

Another significant downside is the amount of screen time students will be forced to endure. Screen time isn’t inherently bad but can be problematic if it’s consistent throughout the day as the only educational tool. 

Conclusion

The flipped classroom can be an effective way of engaging students and aiding them in being a part of their own education. Done right, it’s a flexible solution that suits both students and teachers. 

Interested in how wireless screen sharing can help create a better learning environment? Book a personal Airtame demo right now.

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Edtech tools and technology in the classroom is generating new learning opportunities through personalized teaching, engaging learning strategies and a lot more collaboration than before.

What do we mean by technology in the classroom, or “edtech”?

Edtech – or education technology – is about applying digital technology to support better, more personalized learning. It’s everything from the use of computers to teach math and reading to online testing, immersive experiences, screen sharing, AI-fuelled feedback, and so much more.

Furthermore, and despite popularly held opinion, technology in the classroom can be cost-efficient. IT administrators and CIOs at schools or universities need to stretch tight budgets to accommodate the best, most regularly usable tech. Read more about such budgeting dilemmas in our $1k classroom upgrade interview with Minnesota’s Lake Superior College.

Why do we need technology in the classroom?

Students today are immersed in their digital personas and personal tech outside of school.  Therefore, the education sector can piggyback on that mindset and use it to drive engagement.

Early learners, as well as older students, can benefit from the implementation of edtech. By incorporation play, creativity, and familiar digital tools, students are much likely to stay interested.

Edtech doesn’t have to be futuristic and costly, it can be something as simple as using current technology in a new and fun way. That way, no one gets left behind and the whole learning environment becomes – and stays – collaborative.

BYOD, or truly inclusive environments

The BYOD or Bring Your Own Device educational approach is becoming increasingly popular in the classroom. In a BYOD environment, students can bring in their own equipment.

As most students already have their own smartphone or tablet they use for leisure activities, incorporating them can cut costs significantly for a school. And since they’re already using their devices in their private lives, why not embrace it in the classroom too?

In a school environment, students are likely to have a myriad of different devices and operating systems that somehow need to work together. Some prefer Apple for their intuitive design and variety of easy-to-use products, while others would rather go for the straightforward and more widely accessible Microsoft suite.

But the number of Chromebooks in the classroom is rising. Using Chromebooks for teaching purposes is quickly becoming teachers’ favorite because it comes with Google’s education tools and because it’s a much cheaper choice than Microsoft and Apple’s products.

Smartphones in the classroom isn’t an alien thought either. Because so many different types of devices and operating systems are in place in a BYOD environment, the other digital tools implemented in the classroom also need to meet the requirement of several different platforms.

Ditch the paper versions for digital resources

One way to go digital that isn’t just sustainable but also more interactive is to switch to digital textbooks. Digital textbooks are not just online versions of their paper counterparts. Nowadays, they’re much more than that, with incorporations of intelligent software, databases, and individualized training. They can be easily updated and won’t get worn out in time as a regular textbook will.

Aside from saving a lot of money and paper on physical resources such as textbooks, digital learning tools like digital textbooks and online learning academies have the advantage of customization, meaning that every student can get a version of the course that best suits their needs.

Schools can make a tremendous contribution to a healthy and sustainable learning environment by significantly reducing paper waste. Going digital will help curb deforestation and develop awareness around a ‘green mindset’. Learn more about a ‘green mindset’ in schools in our edtech trend piece here.

But besides digital textbooks, we want to highlight Khan Academy, which is a set of online tools mainly based on their YouTube videoes. The YouTube videos serve as a basic understanding of a specific topic, for example, geometry.

Khan Academy’s website provides a set of practice lessons and progress tracking that can be used as a supplement to the videos. And while Khan Academy’s teaching tools aren’t a replacement for regular teaching, they certainly offer great support for more personalized learning in the classroom.

Khan Academy is available in many different languages, including English, French, Spanish, Turkish – and plenty other partial translations. It’s non-profit and can be used by anyone, and there’s even a mobile application for easier access.

Chalkboards, whiteboards, and now smartboards

Smartboards are interactive whiteboards, and they’re increasingly popular examples of technology in the classroom because they allow students and teachers to interact in a whole new way that’s more collaborative. Where whiteboards only allow writing, smartboards often use digital markers to record what is written. It’s an incredible visual aid that can support both teachers and students.

The Promethean ActivBoard Touch is a great example. An electronic touch board that allows students and teachers to create great content and manipulate it afterward using digital markers.

It allows multi-touch functionality, dry-erase writing and drawing, and compatibility with both MacOS, Windows and Linux.

Promethean even offers more than 60,000 free teaching resources for the smartboard that truly make learning come alive and interactivity an incorporated part of the classroom.

Another smartboard display we can recommend is the Samsung Flip. More on that – and its integration with Airtame – here.

Wireless presentation

Presenting to a TV or projector n the classroom is an absolute must for a teacher in the modern classroom. But wireless screen sharing can go way beyond just teacher presentations.

Airtame is a wireless screen sharing solution that works in a BYOD environment – all devices and platforms included. It not only lets teachers present to the screen or projector in the room with ease, but the students can.  

Wireless presentation also has the benefit of getting rid of messy cables and adding some freedom to the classroom. The cables might not be the biggest concern for most people, but in a classroom with young adults roaming the room, cutting the cables could cause fewer accidents.

Add to that, wireless presentation tools such as Airtame grant teachers the freedom to walk around the room and give their support to individual students, all without losing sight of what’s on the screen.

Having an inclusive screen sharing tool like that will significantly increase collaboration and engagement in the classroom. If you’re curious to learn more about Airtame, just watch this quick video:

Nothing without great teaching

Edtech does not create better education of its own accord but can help facilitate teachers to become the best educators they can be. What we’re saying is that edtech should be used as a tool, not necessarily as a complete replacement.

The main idea of implementing technology in the classroom is to create a more dynamic and flexible learning environment.

Using technology in the classrooms allows teachers to give immediate feedback and experiment with their teaching, it can automate otherwise tedious tasks, provide fun and engaging learning environments for students, and help shape the online identities of the modern, digital citizens that the students will become.

Are you a fan of edtech? Perhaps you’ve already implemented classroom technology? Let us know what you like the most about edtech – and perhaps what you find challenging as well

The post The essential technology in the classroom appeared first on Airtame.

In one of his case studies, he let students attend lectures and then gave them a pop quiz right at the start of the next class. The performance was abysmal. A few weeks later, the results were deteriorating further, which indicated that the students were only retaining a minimal amount of what was taught during the lectures.

The solution to this problem meant a radical change to the traditional methods of teaching, but something that was very much possible. Here is a glimpse into some of the essentials that you need to consider for your classroom next semester.

Active learning methods to replace long lectures

Active learning is a new teaching approach that progresses with a student-centric mindset. In this approach, the teacher wants the students to take back something and probe into it. One of the most effective active learning methods is to divide a problem into subproblems and assign it to several small groups within a class. Occasionally, the teacher should group them back together and also guide them in the right direction.

Another active learning method is One Minute Paper or The Muddiest Point Paper in which the students are given the opportunity to write down the most important points from the day’s session or the least clear point (muddy). The responses can be later addressed in the next class or through online groups.

A popular active learning method is brainstorming where students are encouraged to generate ideas on a certain topic or a particular category. The ideas they pitch are written on a blackboard and all of the ideas, however improbable they may seem, must be noted.

Active learning is not just about handing over responsibilities to the student, it involves a great deal of effort from the teacher’s side as well. The teacher must not only know the content but should also know how to create interactive experiments and challenging scenarios.

Laptops are not the biggest source of distraction in a class, it is boredom and irrelevance. Students tend to stay attentive to topics that grab their attention and has an impact beyond the classroom itself. Teachers should look into changing the way they construct their lectures and incorporate new teaching methodologies to enhance student throughput.

Building a dynamic study environment through tech

The smartphone penetration in Europe was 84% of the total population at the beginning of 2017 and over 23% of the total population is under the age of 24. This opens up a huge potential for bringing flexible and innovative learning methods through technology to a large population of students.

Most of the existing classrooms have a specific set of hardware that the students and teachers are expected to comply with. This creates a lot of cable clutter, confusion, and difficulty for maintenance. But incorporating a device like Airtame into the classroom removes the necessity for cables when it comes to presentations and seminars and eases the maintenance overhead on the IT admins.

It also opens up the entire classrooms to learn collaboratively by allowing every student and teacher to mirror the contents from their device to the monitor independently.

Students nowadays don’t just want to learn about something, but they want to feel the context. This is where some of the most popular gadgets and technologies come into play. Virtual reality headsets can prove to be a boon for teachers as it allows students to virtually experience what is being taught.

Whether it is learning about the solar system, different parts of a car or historical monuments these headsets can elevate the learning experience to a whole new level.

Hands-on learning is crucial

Knowing concepts but failing to understand where to use them renders the knowledge useless. This is a very relevant statement in today’s world wherein students are only taught the high-level outline of concepts but are not encouraged to move deeper into the subject.

Hands-on learning through Arduino kits, 3D printers and more are proven to be better for the students in terms of retention capacity, problem-solving capability and better engagement.

The post The essential teaching tips you need to bring to your classroom next semester appeared first on Airtame.

Technology is evolving exponentially and it is opening up several avenues for the education sector that will allow students as well as teachers to eg. Take the example of BYJU’S, an online tutoring company that shot to worldwide attention after being funded by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Tencent and others for over $240 million.

Airtame, with over 80,000 devices sold worldwide, has made wireless screen mirroring accessible to students and teachers alike, reducing the need for multiple cables in the classroom and office.

Moving Towards a Digital Classroom

According to Angel.co, there are nearly a thousand edtech startups in the United States with an average valuation of $3.4 million. We can say without a doubt that the education sector is taking giant strides through the incorporation of technology. New teaching methods include the use of devices and apps that give more importance to the student’s input rather than the teacher’s.

A simple, yet effective device like Airtame can make a huge difference when it comes to seminars or presentations conducted from the student’s laptops. There may be a lot of conflicting hardware among students’ laptops and other devices, which makes it difficult for a smooth studying experience. Not to mention the plethora of different cables like VGA, HDMI and other connectors and adapters that are needed to ensure uniformity between devices.

With Airtame, all they have to do is install the app on their laptops and get ready to press the mirroring button to start wireless screen sharing. They can then quickly stop sharing, and pass on the responsibility to the next student or teacher.

Creating a Flexible and Collaborative Learning Space

Pedagogy is slowly changing with institutes like Hult International Business School, Parkland School District and Lake Superior College making use of devices like Airtame for an extremely flexible and collaborative learning space.

Let’s take a look at how Lake Superior College is using Airtame to introduce new teaching pedagogy. Before the introduction of Airtame, it was tough for them to find a universal mirroring solution that works with all devices, independent of the operating system. It was also difficult for IT admins to cater to all the support tickets that came their way due to technical difficulties during presentations.

With Airtame, they have been able to reduce the support requests and the downtime between various presentations are minimal due to the ease with which Airtame can juggle between users.

Business schools and colleges have lots of presentations to be done, both by students as well as teachers, which makes Airtame very relevant for such a use case. Since most of the classrooms are still analog, a complete wireless solution that is both cost-effective and platform agnostic makes for a considerable upgrade.

From Passive to Active

The biggest advantage of using technology in the classroom is making students active instead of being passive like in the traditional classroom. Students are participating more in the learning process which is centered around them, rather than “the big lecture”.

Incorporating digital devices like Airtame has not only allowed teachers to include more students into the learning space, it has also become a boon to the IT admins at schools and colleges due to the lack of cables as well as the universal cloud management tool that allows them to configure it remotely right from their desk.

The introduction of technology into classrooms will take its time and the process has already begun. There will come a time when textbooks will no longer be in use and the whole classroom will be digital.

Looking for more education inspiration? See our prediction on what classrooms will look like in the future.

This post was originally featured on teacherswithapps.com

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