Let's Have Our Students Do The Flipping Today To Celebrate "Flip Your Classroom Day"

Today is a day that I have been so excited about as we start a new school year.  

The Flipped Learning Network announced "Flip Your Classroom Day"as a day they were challenging educators across the globe to take a pledge to flip one lesson. 

They would like all teachers to experience Flipped Learning and what it can bring to our young people and school communities.

I have been brainstorming with others how we could collaborate on a flipped lesson for our pledge.

My friend Steve Gagnon, a teacher in New Hampshire, created his awesome first flipped lesson yesterday using EduCreations and even sent it to our 5th graders in Van Meter to try.  Today I was planning on creating one to share with his students too.

But then something happened today that made me think about "Flip Your Classroom Day" a little differently.

My first graders are learning how to use Tuxpaint to create their own self portraits for the Van Meter First Grade All About Us eBook we are writing.

We started out as a group watching a little flipped video that two of our first graders created last year using Camtasia Relay from TechSmith on my laptop.

I have it on the 1st Grade Symbaloo webmix, along with TuxPaint stories from my friend Andy Plemmons students in Georgia and SlideSnack, the digital tool we will use to create our eBook.

Symbaloo is the easiest way to keep all of our resources for a project together.  It also gives them the opportunity to go back to this flipped video anytime they need to at school or home.

In this wonderful flipped video from the Van Meter EduVision channel, Let's Learn About TuxPaint!, Eve and Regan teach us how to create using this digital storytelling tool.  I love how they explain TuxPaint. I could never do the explanation better than the two of them.  It is just perfect.

And just perfect for our young people which is the most important thing.  

While watching the video, I thought.....

Why am I doing the flipping to share with my students, Steve's, and others around the world tomorrow?  

Why not let my students create flip lessons throughout the day and we can share these at Van Meter and others?  

We have everything they need.  

Now they just need an invitation to come to the library to think of something they can teach others and flip lessons of their own throughout the day.  

So with a bunch of fun posters created with ReciteThis to put up around the school and post on our social networks,

our iPad camera and tripod,

their iPads,

the Camtasia Relay Fuse app, 

a few laptops set up in the library with,

Camtasia Relay, 

the Van Meter EduVision Channel to upload their flipped videos,

and the new "Van Meter Students Flipped Lessons" Symbaloo to share their videos and.....

I challenge you to do the same with your students and school community.  

Let's give our young people a chance to do the flipping and teach all of us today.  Let's empower them with the tools and opportunities to make a difference in the learning that is happening on this special day and throughout the year.

And when we Skype with Steve's students this afternoon so they can teach and play GeoGuesser with ours we will be using Google Hangout to create a collaborative flipped lesson to share with all of you.

Happy Flipped Learning Day!