Ways to make a flipped classroom.

I am exploring at least three apps and one website to see about creating videos/podcasts/screencasts for my classroom.  I often have students traveling or absent and I see this as a way to have the material available to the students so they can catch up.  It is also something I could have when I have a substitute in the classroom.
As far as apps go I am looking at
1. Explain Everything
2. Showme
3. Educreations.
Someone suggestsed Knowmia and I just discovered Screen-o-matic  which would allow me to create screencasts on my computer.  It has both a free and a paid version.
I realize there is a huge investment in time to set up the new way of organizing my classroom but once its done, I can reuse or adjust things.

3 act math tasks

I have been assigning math tasks as homework but my students often need too much scaffolding to do it by themselves.  I just discovered Dan Meyers 3 act math tasks.  The main website has a picture or video and the visitor can ask a question about the video or picture.  What makes this site more valuable are the lesson plans for the 3 act math tasks. 
Act one is the set up based on the video or picture
Actu two is looking at what info is needed to solve this.
Act three is the resolution.
In finding the site, I found this spreadsheet with a list of three act math tasks on the website.
This looks like a nice way to scaffold tasks for my students so they can complete the assignment without getting too frustrated.

A way to reinforce solving equations using elimination.

I gave the students a worksheet on solving systems of equations using elimination.  The first thing I had the students do was to graph the two equations on Desmos and write down the point of interception.  This app is quite good in that it shows a dot where the lines cross and if you tap the dot, it will display the coordinates in (x,y) form.  The other day one of my students stumbled across a section with examples of lines, parabolas, trig, conic sections, polar graphing, transformations and calculus.  Each of these topics has subtopics.  I looked at the trig section and it has period and amplitude, phase, all the trig functions, wave interference and the unit circle.  I tapped on period and amplitude and a small dialog box came up with an sample problem and the graph. It allows you to explore the graph by changing values of the period and amplitudes and the graph automatically adjusts.  This would allow a student to actually put values in of real problems to see them solved.
You can add an expression, text or table.  Furthermore, you can change the window settings.  The more I use this particular graphing program, the more I see uses for it next year in my classes. The bad thing is that you do not have to rewrite equations into the slope intercept form to use it.

Talk about a learning experience

I put a problem on the board for most of my classes to do and was shocked at the results.  I put 2(x+3)-3(x-2)=18 up and many of my upper level students had trouble doing this problem.  Only one student in the Algebra I class could do it.  I discovered this using the favorite bad assessment I talk about in yesterday's post.  It is a great assessment that takes all of 5 min and gives a good view of the topic.
Yesterday, I had students work on standardized problems alone on their iPads using gloss.  Over all it went pretty well but I think I'll have them help each other so each group gets all the correct answers.  If a student asked what perimeter is, I told them to look it up.  I think by helping each other, they will actually learn it better and it involves peer tutoring. 
Instead of giving finals, I am assigning projects to three  of my 5 classes using Haiku Deck.  I said they had to use their own words, make their own diagrams and they had to use complete sentences.  One of the students objected that this is a math class not an English class.  I laughed and told them there is English in Math.....LOL.
Next step is to figure out what type of flipping I can do with the limited or no internet my students have on their mobile devices.  Actually, I should think of homework assignments they can do using their mobile devices or assignments my traveling students can use mobile devices on.

Trying to get away from teacher lead activities

Up to now, I've been giving warm-ups and standardized test questions to the students most mornings and then going over the problems.  Too many students would just wait and copy it all down rather than trying to work things out themselves. Last week, I changed to going as far as setting up the problem and letting them finish it.  Beginning this week, I am going to change to the "Best no" where I have students work out the problems on a small piece of paper and then go through the answers with a yes or no.  Finally, I'll choose the best no and put it up on the smartboard so students can see it. I'll have them tell me the good things about it and then have them tell me what was done wrong.  I got this off the teaching channel.
As for the standardized test questions, I am going to have them work in pairs to come up with answers using the iPads to write their answers on.  I"ll check and mark them down for how well they did it on a 1 to 5 scale.  This way I am hoping to eliminate the straight guessing and actually get them to do some of the work rather than waiting till I go over them.  I will go over but at the end of the period once I've given them a grade.  One of the new focuses of our state standards is to build persistence and I've not done that enough.
This summer I am going to try to build more activities for persistence and for formative assessment into my lesson plans.  So much to do and not enough time.

Relating math to real life

In my first period we are doing more vocational math till the end of year and the students are really enjoying it.  Today one of their assignments was to use the internet to research for blueprints such as how are they made, where did the name blueprint come from and how are they used.  Continuing the theme, I asked all my classes to tell me about one of their video/digital games and the statistics that the game kept tract of.  Then I asked the students to describe the  math they found in a TV show or a movie and what the math applied to.  Both questions brought forth a lot of discussion and the students had a good time explaining their favorite digital game or TV show.  In addition to game shows, they brought up "Are you smarter than a 5th grader", Sons of guns, and other such shows.  I enjoyed the conversation that took place in the classroom.

Cast.org

Cast.org is the website that was mentioned yesterday in the video clip I watched on the teaching channel.  The motto of the place is transforming education through universal design.  Much of the material on the website is research based and offers professional learning and learning tools.  I looked and the learning tools and was very impressed.  They have a UDL studio so you can create educational materials, an exchange, math puzzles, a curriculum toolkit, a bookbuilder so the teacher can create digital books,  a curriculum self-check, a lesson builder, and several other items.  This is a website I need to utilize over the summer to help me create differentiated lessons so all my students can learn better.  I am impressed and am thrilled I ran across this site.
I finally realized that I do not need to work all the problems in my warm-ups, I can just make sure they have the correct equation so they can do the work themselves.  I should have realized this earlier but didn't and know I'm thrilled I finally got it through my head.  This way students who aren't sure how to do it, have a starting point.