of the hurdles and blunders that we've seen commonly happen

as teachers flip their classrooms.

>>Aaron Sams: Make sure your students can access the content.

We all know that not all students have access

to the Internet at their home, so you may have to come

up with some other solutions.

Get some flash drives, check them out to students;

burn the video content onto DVDs; or write a grant,

get a class set of some sort of digital device

that you can check out to your students

and they can take home and use that way.

>>Jon Bergmann: Make sure you teach your students how

to watch a video.

You say, "My kids know how to watch a video."

Yes, they know how to watch "Spiderman",

but that's not the same as watching an educational video

that you've created for them to watch.

Ultimately you're trying to teach them how to interact

with the video content in a meaningful way that causes them

to reflect and think through what they're being exposed to.

I had a conversation with a sixth grade teacher and he said,

"I spent three weeks teaching my students how to watch a video."

He had, you know, little guys, you know, twelve-year olds.

I had sixteen-year olds.

It makes a huge difference based on the maturity of the kids

and what they are ready and prepared to learn.

>>Aaron Sams: Keep in mind that the length

of the video does matter.

Our rule of thumb is one to one

and a half minutes per grade level that the students are in.

So a fourth grade student--

you're talking four to six minutes max.

A tenth grade student-- ten to fifteen maximum.

Keep it short and if you need to make more videos that are short,

that's better than making fewer videos that are long.

Another question that a lot of teachers ask is, "What do I do

if students show up to my class

and they haven't viewed the content?"

Well, let's be real here.

I mean, there are kids who are gonna show up to any classroom

who haven't done their homework.

That's just a reality that we live in as educators.

It's really not that different in a flipped classroom.

But there are ways that you can safeguard or build in some steps

to keep kids engaged while they're viewing the content

and that you can use to check to see if they have.

We took the low-tech approach;

we just wanted to see some notes.

Other teachers are embedding these videos onto a webpage

and embedding like a Google form underneath it

to collect some data from the students,

having them answer some questions.

You could just pose a question in the video themselves

and have the students bring the answer to that question

as an entrance ticket into class.

So there's all sorts of different ways

that you can check to see if students actually did their work

and then you as a teacher, as an educator,

will just hold them accountable for that.

>>Jon Bergmann: Ultimately, I think the key is

that you hold kids accountable.

If they've made the poor choice of not doing the work,

then what you're gonna do is you're gonna take that time

and you're gonna say, "You know have to watch the video

in class while the other kids are getting help

on the hard stuff."

>>Aaron Sams: So some teachers get a little intimidated

by this idea of creating their own videos.

Really you don't need a super-duper studio.

You don't need to worry

about high-dollar cameras and things like that.

But there are a few techniques that you can do

to really improve the quality of you stuff.

So sit in a room with good lights, have a nice area to work

and don't have a distracting background.

Have it something nice and simple.

Those are things that you can introduce to help the quality.

Another question you should ask yourself is,

"Do I need it to be perfect?

Or do I need it on Tuesday?"

So some teachers can get bogged down in trying

to have everything just perfect, but how many

of your actual live lessons in a classroom have been perfect?

Probably not very many.

We teach naturally.

We teach organically and we speak to our students

in a way that's meaningful to them.

Make these videos the same way;

just make them effective content-delivery tools.

Don't worry about trying to make a Hollywood production

out of it.

>>Jon Bergmann: One of the beauties

of the flipped class is it's very scalable.

You know what?

You don't have to flip a class.

You could flip one lesson.

Or you could flip a unit.

Or you could flip a whole class.

It's scalable.

So one recommendation we would have for you is maybe you need

to start small and figure out what's the best place to flip.

If I were to give you a recommendation

of what you should flip if you're looking for a lesson,

find something that your kids struggle with.

I was working with a group of fourth grade teachers

and we were talking about math.

And they said-- in unison they said,

"My kids struggle with long division."

I said, "That's your first flipped class video is

long division."

So what's the equivalent of long division for you?

That's your first lesson to flip.

>>Aaron Sams: So to recap, make sure all

of your students have access to the content.

>>Jon Bergmann: Make sure

to teach them how to watch the videos.

>>Aaron Sams: Build in some safeguards to make sure

that all students are actually watching the videos.

>>Jon Bergmann: Don't feel the need

to make your videos perfect.

>>Aaron Sams: And don't try to do too much all at once.

Take it step-by-step, take it slow

and before long you'll have flipped your class.

>>[applause]