IDE Week 4 Ed Tech in the Classroom

I was doing some additional research on educational technology for this week, and came across this article on faculty focus. It's about reducing passivity in the classroom by putting students in the driver's seat of their own learning. I try to do practice this when I do one:one reference, and I love the idea of doing this in the classroom. This article discusses an assignment where students are put in charge of teaching a chapter of their textbook. They have to create a video for the class to watch before they teach, then they teach a 50 minute session. I love the idea of having the students create a flipped classroom of their own.  By using video creation technology (jing, imovie... something free that is easy to learn), the students can create their own product, and actively learn the information (while also learning another potentially useful skill -- video creation). 

This type of activity definitely aligns with what I surmised from the Horizon Report for higher ed: 

"The learning environment transforms into a dynamic and more social space where students can participate in critiques or work through problems in teams" (pg. 37). 

I want the students to be able to collaborate -- a goal/idea that is a thread running through my blog posts. I also think this is a great way for them to tackle a problem they might have in a real-life job situation -- explaining a concept to a coworker, creating a product, and delivering a presentation to a group. Also, this aligns with my wanting to teach the students that they are creators of information, and can contribute to the scholarly conversation. 

Finally, I think this type of activity motivates students because it is attention grabbing -- a novel experience that they may have not had the opportunity to participate in before, and it is hopefully instilling confidence in the learner by providing students with a new challenge and an interesting way to solve the problem.