So many books, so little time. Frank Zappa

I have started my 7th year of teaching! Just finished the first full week back with kids. It's great to have the students back. The past week was a good one... but exhausting! It feels as if I'm more like 3 weeks into the new school year.

Last year, I developed a digital literacy course, which I taught to the 10th graders. This year, there are 5 teachers for digital literacy, all teaching my ideas and lessons. It's daunting and interesting to figure out the best (and smoothest) way to make this work. All-in-all, I want the students to learn skills that will help them in their other classes, throughout university, and in the real world.

Recently, I read a book about the flipped classroom, a rather new concept in the field of education. Reading the book made me excited and energized to try pieces of this strategy. I'm not fully flipping the classroom with this digital literacy course but I do want to use videos for some core lessons. This way, I can teach what I specialize in and the other teachers can share the video with their students.

Anyway, below is a video that the film teacher helped me create. I had a vision and tried to explain it to him in words. HE GOT IT! I love the outcome. He completely "got" my vision.

My plan is to use this quick video as the opening to each of my video lessons...

Note: the book I read is, Flip Your Classroom: Read Every Student in Every Class Every Day, by Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann. (For my Colorado friends, these two authors met and taught together in Woodland Park, Colorado!)