Book Wesley Fryer for a presentation or workshop (either face-to-face or over video) by visiting his contact page on www.wesfryer.com/contact. Presentation / workshop handout links are available on wiki.wesfryer.com.
19th January 2009

Making homework into classwork with mastery learning

posted in podcasting, schoolreform |

I’ve posted twice in the past few weeks about Colorado teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams’ use of video podcasting to “flip” the traditional school model of lecturing during face-to-face class time and sending students home to complete independent practice activities in isolation. Their 21.5 minute video, “Mastery Learning That Works,” provides more background and details about the instructional model they espouse in their classroom and workshop series they’ve launched as Peak Educational Consulting, LLC. Basically, they are using video podcasts to present lectures and having students work during class on independent practice activities which would normally be “homework.” That way as students need assistance, they are there (as teachers) to provide support and answer questions.

Thanks to Jonathan for letting me know about this video and their workhops over on ISTEconnects.org.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 10:50 pm and is filed under podcasting, schoolreform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 9 responses to “Making homework into classwork with mastery learning”

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  1. 1 On January 20th, 2009, Jay Swan said:

    This is great. I embedded the video on our school’s wiki with the hope that our administration will take note and be more accepting and accommodating to those of us that are trying to push our practice beyond the traditional format – their model is very inspiration. Some of us have already started talking about how to implement a form of this.

  2. 2 On January 20th, 2009, Breanna Hite said:

    That makes a rather remarkable amount of sense. I’m very glad they thought of that. Sometimes it’s the simplest things…

  3. 3 On January 20th, 2009, Greg Stager said:

    I agree that this is a great way to develop relationships with the students and to spend more of the class time answering questions and helping students rather than yakking at them the whole time. I have been doing this for two years now with my own classes and I can vouch for the effectiveness of this.

    These guys were smart enough to take it a bit further with the mastery bit which I think is great.

    Excellent work and great video for sharing with faculty!

  4. 4 On January 21st, 2009, Mastery Learning that Works :: Patrick Malley said:

    [...] Speed of Creativity. January 21, 2009 • No Comments • Tags: education, Fryer, link, mastery, podcast, Speed [...]

  5. 5 On January 21st, 2009, Jason said:

    What I really like about this idea is that it rids “hands on learning” tasks of the dead reckoning problem that exists in a number of classrooms. Students just don’t have the background or domain knowledge to make a lot of high-level learning assignments and discussions meaningful and successful. It appears that they were successful and completion rates and learning increased, but based on my experience with my students, I wonder how many would actually review the media at a high enough rate to take the next step.

  6. 6 On January 21st, 2009, Wesley Fryer said:

    That is true, Jason, that the question “Did you do the reading?” now becomes “Did you watch the vodcast?” However, I think compliance may be encouraged more strongly than in a traditional classroom because of the requirement to get the assignment completed in class. I’m thinking this would have been a great approach for my own statistics courses in grad school.

  7. 7 On January 21st, 2009, SWAN teaching » Blog Archive » Mastery said:

    [...] However, if I was “excited” about technology in the classroom, I am blown away about an idea that Wesley Fryer shared two days ago.  In his entry “Making homework into classwork with [...]

  8. 8 On January 22nd, 2009, Screencasting and Mastery | Hybrid Learning said:

    [...] watched the video from Wesley Fryer’s blog about a couple teachers that are using vodcasts, or screencasts as I prefer to call them, to [...]

  9. 9 On January 25th, 2009, Adria Carter said:

    As a fourth grade teacher, there are so many new resources available to provide support for students in the home environment. I look forward to the day when all students are issued a laptop just as we would issue them a textbook. I have made it a goal to introduce one lesson each week with computer technology or to use technology to reinforce a concept. The only thing that lacks in everyone’s life is that of TIME – I would love to have the TIME to then post all of these activities on my class webpage. I guess that will become my goal for the summer!