I am a very goal oriented person.
That being said: when I decided to try this flipped classroom idea I wanted to do it all the way – a video for beginners weekly (or close to it). I have to tell you that I failed. There were weeks (ahem: UIL week) where I did not post a new video for my beginners. There were weeks when I would go home from school and think “I need to make a video because I told my percussion kids I would. I left all my books at home. I think we were on line 112. I will make a video telling them to practice line 112.”

People. This is not a good enough reason to make a video. This is abuse of the beautiful system and abuses the trust that you have with your students. Warning: if you do this too many times, you will lose them – they will not visit your website because they will not be learning something new on it. They will rely on someone else to tell them what line the challenge is over or they will wait in class for someone else to perform it and then just copy whatever their friend did. Don’t make this mistake like me!

Luckily I don’t feel that I completely lost my students for learning this way but I would be lying if I told you that it didn’t get harder to keep it up at the end of the year when everyone wants to be done anyway.

My advice: keep it real, post good and instructional videos to reinforce concepts and teach new ones – make this a rich resource that your students depend on!

Ideas for easy videos on weeks you are feeling overwhelmed or lazy?