## Wednesday, April 13, 2011

### Flipping with Fun Audrey

Amazing and weird things are happening!

There are two of me now. One of me does all the work, and the other one has all the fun. The workhorse me does the delivery of the content, and then fun me gets to do the fun stuff with my kids. The workhorse is voicethread Audrey, and then in class I am Fun Audrey. I like being Fun Audrey.

For example, voicethread Audrey shows them that the equations of the asymptotes of the hyperbola are:

....but Fun Audrey gives them three different hyperbolas:

....asks them to find their asymptotes' equations, and surprise, surprise, they all have the same asymptotes!...It's the ratio of b:a that influences the slope...and now that they know the same asymptotes can belong to many different hyperbolas, I can give them this:
...and feign astonishment when I say".... "What? Which hyperbola, you say? Well, what else do I need to tell you so that you'll know which one I mean..." Now they know something about the hyperbola that voicethread Audrey would have taken 10 times as long to show, and that only one tenth of them would have gotten anyway.

Oh yes....Fun Audrey is having fun!

More thoughts:
• I don't think I am covering the content faster, but it sure seems like I am covering it better. I have more class time, for sure.
• But someone is paying for this extra time by getting less time to do something else. Who is paying and how much is it costing? Are they doing less written work than pre-flip? Are there some who are doing more work than they've done all year?
• My two J's continue to REALLY astonish me, no feigning here. There is no denying that they are learning more, working more, and participating more since I started this. Can't wait to see what their next tests are like.
• As I mentioned, I am having fun. Hopefully, I am not the only one. Soon time to poll. Or blog.
• At the very least, they are now getting two chances to get the content. I used to tell them over and over that most people need to listen to a lesson twice before they really get it. And I always made the recorded lesson available to them right after class, but very few actually listened to it a second time, even if they didn't understand. Now, by the time we're in class, anything I say in relation to the content is already the second pass. Theoretically.
• If I were a first-year teacher, there would be no Fun Audrey, maybe not even a voicethread Audrey. Because first-years don't already have a huge bank of powerpoints that they can just polish up and upload to voicethread. I do. Because I am also.....Powerpoint Audrey!
Looking forward to the flipped class webinar Monday! Fun Audrey will be there!