Show you what all that howl is for

Orson Welles, Associated Press via LA Times

I love listening to the radio. I start every day with Morning Edition or Car Talk on the weekends, and listen to the BBC World Service as I go to sleep. I think I could listen to Ira Glass narrate the grass growing. When we were kids, my brother would record episodes of Whose Line is it Anyway? to listen to on long car trips and my mother has the old radio show The Shadow on CD. The only reason I’m not listening to NPR as I write this is that there’s a really cool show on PBS about Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds radio play.

Of course, I had a good time listening to my classmate’s presentation about using podcasts in the classroom. I hate to admit they were good, but they were good. Listening to what they had come up with and recorded was pretty impressive—I would very much like to make my own golden record now, thanks.

So many ideas were swimming in my brain at the end of the evening and I have not really stopped thinking about it. I would love to have my students produce their own news stories about a current political or economic event, or something happening in their own community. They could interview other students around the school about their opinions during campaign season or our next debt deal debate.

I think it could also be a helpful learning tool. After generating class definitions for key concepts, we could record them and keep an audio encyclopedia from which the kids could study. I think some may also benefit from using audio recordings of some tougher readings to go along with the text.

I don’t know everything I could do with this, but I’m definitely making my students listen to Marketplace Money soon.

This doesn't really relate to anything, but I like listening to him.

I want to turn the whole thing upside down, I'll find the things they say just can't be found

Last week in my student teaching placement we had a global trade simulation. We've been watching a movie and discussing things a lot lately, so this was a nice change of pace. And the kids loved it. 

I mean they LOVED it. 

It was actually quite a lot of just to watch these kids running around, climbing on chairs, yelling over each other stock exchange-style just so they could import and export enough to meet their quotas and overcome the trade restrictions. Our Ghana team was over the moon when they figured out they could buy oil and then resell it to the nations with embargoes against Saudi Arabia at a premium. Fist bumping occurred. 

We don't spent a lot of time lecturing, but that just makes me wonder all the more if flipping would be feasible for my econ classroom. The lectures and lessons do not really seem hard to turn into videos or podcasts and that could free up class time to focus on what is most important in economics: practice and application.

The presentation we had from veteran teacher Jonathan Thomas-Palmer not only made me regret not taking physics when I was a student at the high school he taught at, but also made me think a lot about what goes on in my classroom at my placement.

One thing that tends to take a lot of time in our econ class is going over the study guide. Though students are meant to fill it out as they read the chapter for homework, they usually have so many questions about things they didn’t understand when we review it in class that it must feel like doing the assignment twice. But if we move the lecture out of the classroom and align it with the bookwork, it might actually give us more time to go over the concepts in the first place rather than trying to fit all the information into the class period alongside the simulations and real-world application.

 Yeah, let's not be like him...

There are so many things to be taught in economics these days, from foundations and micro to macroeconomics, policy, and personal finance. It is tough to go over everything as well as it deserves. But with planning, the flipping method would allow for clearer and more focused lesson at home with the interactive elements taking center stage at school.

I worry a bit about the digital divide. Of course Jon would not have had a problem with students not being able to watch at home back where I’m from, but now, as a grad student, the internet I depend upon is not as reliable. Having the connection and technology might be a bigger problem in other places. On the other hand, it could be a way to connect students to learning. Many kids already spend a lot of time watching online videos. Many businesses and entertainment outlets have started to reach out to them, so why not education? I think with some experience, the kids might like that too.