This story happens across 2 continents and was super exciting for everybody involved. To read a blog post from the other, more articulate side please visit Jessica Weber’s Blog Post here.
Early on in my flipped learning journey, I decided to make all my videos public on youtube.
This wasn’t out of some desire for worldwide fame. Rather, students at my school but not in my class had heard about my videos. They wanted access to them and I was happy to help. An open youtube channel was the easiest way to do it.
But obviously this means that people from around the world can view my videos if they search for the right thing.
I always wonder who these people are who watch and I was lucky enough to find out this week. It all started with this tweet.
How exciting! A grade 7 class from Ontario, Canada have been watching my videos. They were wondering if this question involving patterns could be solved algebraically. One of the students jokingly suggested we ask “the video guy” and Miss Weber ran with it!
The question was a great one as it didn’t exactly work cleanly. It did give me a chance to talk about some of my favourite algebraic ideas though. After a few direct messages back and forth with Miss Weber, I raced into work a little earlier than usual to make a video for them.
This video broke a lot of my flipped video lessons “rules”. It was too long, it didn’t have a clear learning goal and it took a little bit of “movie magic” in post production.
But we’re talking about transcontinental education here! A group of year 7’s asked a question about algebra and I really wanted to give them the answer they deserved.
It was such a trip to wake up to this tweet this morning.
This was all a rather happy accident. As a teacher, somebody asked for help and I definitely wasn’t going to say no.
But I wonder what we could achieve if we purposefully connected our classes? Would our students start to see the world differently if they habitually connected with other classes from around the world?
That’s so cool, congrats Joel. Would love to one day create a connection with another class overseas
Wow! How lovely for the class in Canada. Another example of a generous educator on Twitter. Love it and love global classrooms.
Nice work, Mr Speranza!