Weekly Reflection #2

Touring the NHL website with screen capture

Would HP5 tools be useful in a high-school Social Studies classroom? 

Overall, I believe H5P tools could be a very useful tool in a high-school Social Studies classroom. Firstly, they promote active learning instead of passive consumption. Social studies often rely on simple texts, videos, and lectures. If you were to use HP5 tools, you could make videos more interactive. For example, you could pause a video and ask the students questions, or embed quick checks to check understanding. Using HP5 tools also allows for formative assessments, which are becoming increasingly important in education today. This is assessment for learning. For example, you can embed activities into videos or presentations to check understanding to guide the next steps in learning. The tools provided include options like drag and drop activities, which are like match the terms with the definitions, true or false questions with feedback, and knowledge checks that can all be implemented. These tools also support the Universal Design for Learning, which is incredibly important as classrooms today feature a plethora of unique learning styles. By using HP5 tools, you can combine text, audio, visuals, and videos into one activity. This ensures that each learning style is addressed, and each student gets an equal opportunity to thrive. 

Describe what a flipped Classroom teaching model could look like at the grade level you’d like to teach along with some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for your grade level.

As the University of Manitoba explains, the flipped classroom is a teaching strategy that reverses the ‘lecture in-class and homework outside-of-class approach. Content is provided ahead of each session, typically online in the form of a video or audio lecture, paired with online discussions or quizzes to review the lecture. Activities, such as homework or group work, are moved into the classroom where the instructor provides guidance on in-class activities that often take advantage of the opportunities for peer collaboration. In a flipped classroom approach, the instructor moves from the ‘sage on the stage’ to the ‘guide on the side.’

There are many inherent strengths to this flipped approach. For a high-school Social Studies classroom, this could look like providing students with materials for a lesson to watch at home (such as a short screen casted lesson, videos, some short readings, etc.). Instead of doing this part in class, class-time could now be used solely for hands-on activities (like discussions, debates, projects, assignments, etc.). There are many times where the lecture portion of the class goes long and there is no time to actually get to the hands-on or all of the hands-on activities the teacher had planned. This flipped teaching strategy could maximize time in class for these activities. Another positive of the flipped strategy is that it provides the for students to watch a screen recorded lesson at their own speed with a rewind button and various speeds to watch along with. This is opposed to the traditional in-class method where there is one speed. This could accommodate students with specific learning needs. Lastly, the flipped strategy could be a great way to navigate through the challenge of ChatGPT and students using AI to do their schoolwork. By doing most of the hands-on activities in class, there would be less time at home to potentially cheat. 

I also see the benefit of the flipped classroom strategy during another global pandemic or another event that closes schools down. The flipped classroom approach could allow for instruction and school to continue online, instead of just ending the school year as was the case in 2020.

On the other hand, there are also a few weaknesses to the flipped strategy of teaching. First, there is the problem of accessibility for students. Not every student has access to technology at home, and so if they weren’t able to view the materials at home, they wouldn’t be getting an equal education to everyone else. Second, there is the worry about all of the different distractions at home (phones, videogames, extracurricular activities, family affairs, etc.) that could prevent students from actually viewing the materials that the teacher has provided students to navigate through before class. If students aren’t actually viewing the materials at home, this strategy isn’t going to work well as students will come to class not being able to properly engage with the assignments. 

Sources:

University of Manitoba. (n.d.). Flipped Classroom. https://umanitoba.ca/centre-advancement-teaching-learning/support/flipped-classroom