The question of ‘how would you establish a knowledge network and what would the purpose be?’ was one that myself and five other educators asked in early 2014 over dinner after a TeachMeet held at Google. We were all active users of Twitter who had connected individually yet we could see the need for an Australian community that would help to connect teachers from all sectors in a way that was relaxed and collegial. From this conversation, the #aussieED hashtag was born on Twitter along with the weekly Sunday night chat and the website – aussieed.com

Over the last two years, #aussieED has slowly become the largest educational chat on Twitter and has provided teachers across the country with many opportunities to connect both online and face-to-face.

Whilst surveying teachers to create my digital artefact, one of the questions was whether those completing the survey would be interested in developing a flipped learning PLN through social media such as Twitter or Facebook. There was an overwhelming response from respondents that they were keen on joining a PLN in order to develop their skills in flipping the classroom.

Using the four elements of networks mentioned in ‘Not everything that connects is a network’ (Hearn & Mendizabal, 2011) that this flipped learning network would involve include:

• Purpose: the purpose of this network would be to support teachers who are wanting to introduce or develop their skills in the flipped learning approach to the classroom.
• Role: the role of the network would be to provide these teachers with a social media outlet that allows them to ask questions of other teachers who are able to support them in their journey to flipping their classrooms. Basically, the idea would be that teachers would join the network of their own accord due to their interest in the approach and both help others and receive the help that they need
• Functions: the network would function to allow communication between members which facilitates learning at the same time. It could also act as a place for teachers to share resources that they find that other teachers in the network may find helpful. All in all, the network will be designed to assist teachers to be able to build the capacity required to be able take on the approach themselves
• Form: the network will start off as being one that is solely online with the hopes to build up a membership of teachers across all sectors of education throughout Australia. Being an online network ensures that there no individuals are disadvantaged or not able to benefit from the knowledge being shared due to their geographical location. Eventually, the network may grow enough to be able to hold face-to-face events, just like #aussieED has.

The motivation from writing this post has led me to create the ‘Australian Flipped Classroom Network’ Facebook page that can be found at the following link – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1666197380360423/
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Reference:
Hearn, S., & Mendizabal, E. (2011). Not everything that connects is a network. ODI Background note

I happened to be looking around the Twitterverse when I stumbled upon a tweet stating that you can now the Kahoot as an app for iOS devices! 

Of course, anything that comes from Kahoot I am interested in as I have loved this product since I was first introduced to it over 2 years ago. I automatically signed in to my iTunes account and downloaded the app to see what it was like. 

It is great to note that the app interface is exactly the same as the interface that the students see when logging in to the site on their phone. Everything is laid out exactly the same way with the easy to follow instructions and the bright graphics to engage the users. 

I logged in to my Kahoot account on my laptop and had a go at playing one of my quizzes in order to test out the whole user experience and it was flawless. It travelled through the questions and feedback pages smoothly and easily. Students who used the app to complete their quizzes would have exactly the same experience as a student who was logged on via any other device. 

I will be getting my students to download this app onto their iOS devices when they are at home and have access to their personal wi-fi networks. One question I do have though is how much data will the app use to play a standard game as opposed to going via a web browser on a laptop as I'm sure this will be a question my students ask me!!

I am currently completing my 4th subject of my M.Ed (Knowledge Networking & Digital Innovations) titled 'Knowledge Networking for Educators' and we recently completed our first assessment task. As part of the task we needed to create a digital artefact for other educators to use to help them to become more connected educators and confident in using technology. I decided to create my artefact on the flipped classroom as this is an area of education that I am extremely passionate about and a strategy I am working with my Biology class with. I figured, the reading that I would need to do for the second part of the assessment would help me with my own understanding of the concept enough to be able to teach others about it.

I used PowToon to create my artefact which ended up being a short animated video that runs for just over 5 minutes. I usually shy away from PowToon as it can be quite fiddly to use, but I persisted and about 9 hours (argh!) later, I had my final product. It has been uploaded to YouTube and it has been viewed over 150 times with great feedback being provided by the educators who have watched it.

I really enjoyed this assessment task (well, the creation of my digital artefact not necessarily the 1800 word exegesis that went with it!) and am really excited that educators are asking whether they can use it with their staff as a form of professional development!