Overexposing my children- my social media addiction & theirs

I have embraced the social media sharing world with gusto. And without their consent, this means my kids have, too. Not only will they have a digital scrapbook of almost every single day of their young lives, but also most of the waking hours, through my social media accounts.

As the first generation to experience this degree of public broadcast, will they resent it? Will they continue to crave it? Am I making a big parenting mistake?

The discussion I see around this topic of putting our kids on social media mostly covers safety. The argument goes that our pics are easily traced to specific locations, so we are inviting kidnappers to find our kids remotely. I'm less concerned with this aspect of my constant posting. For one, instances of kidnapping by strangers are extremely rare, like tiny percentages rare. Also, I only broadcast my kids to my Friends, whom I choose carefully based on actual personal relationships. Perhaps in the case of future data mining I will wish not quite so much were known about my life and theirs- but I am taking this risk.

The benefits I imagine around my over-sharing include:

• a larger network of people who seem to genuinely care about the well being of my children since they know them as more than glamshots on a Christmas card once a year
• a resource for advice about rearing my kids- not to mention the cautionary tales
• a controlled "post it on the refrigerator" audience for my kids' creative endeavors and accomplishments- my 8 yr old loves to see what people say when I post about her
• the aspiration to greatness that comes from having an audience- It's been shown again and again that we act "more nobly" when we feel we're being watched. Giving testimonials is a central part of many behavior modification treatments- see AA.
• the chance to find a like-minded community- this is a biggie for me on Facebook. I have made many brand new friends, through old community networks, because of social media. I see what they like, what they post, what they value, and I pursue relationships with them because they suit my family's ethos. It's been a chance to be more selective than just same school, same recreational activities, in building the community around my children.

The risks I imagine around my over-sharing include:

• a public digital history my children may never escape
• a heightened self-consciousness that leads to either insecurity or too much dependence on external approval
• exhausting my audience of our family trivia- familiarity breeds contempt

An article in Salon this past week covered this topic with much more depth and links to a counterpoint that also covers the risks well. 

I've used this post to sort out my thoughts on this because I already know my decision through my own actions- I'll keep relentlessly posting. And I will try to remain reflective about it. I will continue to seek my kids' opinions on it and cease and desist on their behalf at their request. Digital exposure will be a persistently ill-defined problem in their lives, so why not start working on it now?

Visualizing the Writing Process

Images/graphics created to help students "visualize" aspects of the writing process.

Tech Tools for Creativity

Music

--> Offer opportunities for musical expression through collaboration; support with explanation and presentation requirements; include for learning style alternatives 

 

http://www.indabamusic.com/

http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.music

https://soundcloud.com/

 Art

--> Offer opportunities for drawing & painting through collaboration; support with explanation and presentation requirements; include for learning style alternatives  

http://www.omgpop.com/games/drawmything

http://flockdraw.com/

http://www.sketchup.com/

Handicrafts

--> Support tactile learning by encouraging browsing and using forums for handicrafts; include for learning style alternatives  

http://www.etsy.com/

https://www.folkschool.org/

http://www.craftsy.com/

A Review of College Unbound, by Jeffrey J. Selingo

College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students by Jeffrey J. Selingo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For someone who follows the Chronicle of Higher Ed or popular coverage of higher ed in general, there is not much new or surprising here. But Selingo personalizes and contextualizes the facts and figures being thrown at us in the media with his own reporting of anecdotal realities for students, parents and universities. The book cover review quotes focus on the technology disruption elements of his book, but this focus seems only to serve his broader and deeper indictment of the current system in general.

My takeaways from Selingo's coverage:

-Most universities are out of touch and slow to respond to what is a major shift in educational needs and expectations of higher ed students & parents.

-Current degree and major models may hinder more purposeful and future looking learning. Other models, such as those presented on pg. 149 could be explored.

-A gap year could help students mature and be ready to start college.

-Flexibility in course delivery models and certification methods is an emerging need.

My criticisms of Selingo's coverage:

-Selingo shares several stories of exceptional faculty with excellent teaching practices, but when he discusses "faculty" at large he shows some disdain. He writes this book from a student and parent advocacy standpoint and sometimes puts too much responsibility on faculty shoulders and often colors them as dispensable.

-Similar to the prior point, Selingo makes some messy causal claims about institutional responsibility for student success that are a little heavy handed. His logic gets a bit convoluted in trying to answer the question of individual or institutional responsibility for students finishing their degrees. He acknowledges the confounding variables for why students might drop out, but then still wants to argue that because Princeton graduates students at such a high rate, every student should have an equal chance of graduating from any institution. In some logical contortions he tries to support this claim by talking about high achieving students who undermatch- or go to schools with lower graduation rates. But he doesn't follow this up to show if those students, who might also have gotten into a top tier school, finish the lower tier programs with lower rates- he just says they lowered their chances of graduating by merely entering the school. Give me data on some of these individual, undermatched students' graduation rates, and I might see his point better. But whenever he can't find the data, he implies some institutional conspiracies and proceeds to speculate.

-Where he does have data- earnings comparisons between schools, I start to cringe a little. Though he acknowledges that colleges should be for more than setting ones' future wages, he can't stop talking about it and letting that data influence his recommendations for the future of education.

What inspired me in Selingo's work:

- He focuses on ways to encourage universities to get to the "sweet spot" of their students' learning needs. This is my favorite quest. In interviewing some Indian students about a training program they attended once, I saw a student describing his favorite college professor. With reverence, his eyes lit up and he said,"Oh! did he know how to get to the crux of the matter." I replay this in my head often for its passion.


View all my reviews

Teaching Online: A resource & some experiences

One goal of this blog is to provide resources and reflections for other parents like us who have ventured into online teaching as a way of working from home. The following resource is a good one for any online instructors.

Ally's chapter "Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning" in Athabasca University's free web book Theory and Practice of Online Learning provides a very useful summary of the three major theoretical frameworks of learning and shows how they can all be used to offer effective online learning. It is impressive to see how the author concisely reviews the theories, along with supporting paradigms for the theories, into cohesive guidelines for online learning.

I have these comments to add:

1) Ally says that "online learning knows no time zones, and location and distance are not an issue." I disagree. I believe this is a common misconception about online learning that creates unrealistic expectations for learners and facilitators. Even asynchronous learning is highly dependent on a certain flow of discussions, activities, group collaboration and feedback. These components can be affected by disparate time zones and locations. Is it more flexible than a face-to-face classroom? Yes. But time and space are still factors.

2) Ally offers three diagrams for basic information mapping. Here are some great resources for making concept maps (for instructors and learners):

• Wisemapping 
• Coggle 
• Smart Art in MS Word

3) Ally says that "information should be placed in the center of the screen for reading." I'm surprised by this comment, and there's no support cited for it. I have done extensive research on visual communications and reading from computer screens, and this is not a principle I have ever seen supported or espoused. Eye-tracking studies on web users show varied results for predicting where users' eyes will travel across a screen and for what types of information. Yes, centered text will attract attention in some contexts, but this advice needs more context than provided in his bulleted list. My research and experience would lead me to advise attention to font size before page placement. 

4) Ally addresses learning styles in this overview, a controversial topic because the data around this concept is complex. First, it's difficult to find evidence to support any of the current ed psych models of learning styles; second, it's difficult to predict what approaches would or would not enhance learning for those styles if they do exist. Yet, most K-12 and Higher Ed professional development and best practices include advice or requirements to address learning styles. 

I think this is because we all get the sense that something like this is at work in how we learn and that people do learn differently. After a lifetime of being a whiz at all standardized tests, verbal or quantitative, but a total doofus in a laboratory setting (what is it that you people are seeing through that microscope???), I was faced with my first real learning challenge when trying to learn my husband's family's language: Kannada. There's no Rosetta stone, and they don't use our alphabet. Since my only path to learning it seemed to be through my ears, I came to realize- I don't learn well that way. I learn through reading and understanding written symbols. Lucky for me our entire education system has been heavily weighted towards learners like me. If we were still in the days of Socrates' preferred oral tradition, I may have been labeled a slow learner early on. 

I am highly conscious of this as an instructional designer and look for ways to make sure that information is presented in a variety of ways. However, looking at the specific inventories and models presented by Ally in this article is not too helpful since these models have not been well-supported in research. 

5) Ally presents some additional information on motivating learners by including the two stalwarts of this body of research: intrinsic v extrinsic and Keller's ARCS model. I want to add a caveat to the C, for Confidence, in Keller's model. Yes, success helps build learners' confidence, but how many of you remember with absolute clarity every answer you got wrong in your learning endeavors? I know for me, getting it wrong or feeling conflicted about new information tends to increase my chances of storing information in my long term memory. I like to build in ways for learners to be surprised by something they hadn't considered or to even feel irritated or annoyed at points. Our competitive sides can often be motivated from a sense of failure as well as success.

6) I was surprised by Ally's comment that lectures are only instructor-centered in traditional classrooms and that this is no longer an issue in online classrooms because learners encounter content "first-hand." Yes, many online facilitators have moved away from lectures, but many still include them. In my experience of reviewing 200+ faculty-developed online courses at a state university over the last 5 years, I'd estimate at least 50% are still including recorded lectures. Plus, even those faculty who become more like "curators" of outside content instead of presenting their own lectures, are still choosing and framing information through their perspectives and expertise. This is a primary role of the faculty. It is also a responsibility of faculty to design ways for students to personalize the information in both traditional and online classrooms. I think Ally's comparison is false here.

All in all this was an impressive feat of compiling the dense learning theory basis for current online learning guidelines and best practices. 

Spelling Bee: Letter to the Editor

My letter to the editor:

When I opened the Free Lance Star on Thursday, May 30, I was elated to see a young girl from Virginia on the cover participating in a national spelling bee. However, my delight turned to dismay when the first 3 paragraphs focused on this intelligent girl's “lucky dress” and whether it would "make the cut" for the preliminary rounds at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. To add to my shock, the first 5 paragraphs included comments about this smart girl’s “turquoise dress” and “sparkly silver heels.”

My first thought was, I wonder how many readers (to include men of course) are now focused on this sixth grader's "above the knee" dress - yikes! My second thought was, I wonder if any journalist would focus on what a young "boy" was wearing at a spelling bee.

Readers actually have to turn to the back of the section to learn about the details of Jessica’s spelling accomplishment at the spelling bee.

  

If I were writing this article, I would focus on the fact that this is Jessica’s “first” time at the national spelling bee, which demonstrates her intelligence, dedication, and tenacity, and she is a “homeschooler,” which was mentioned only once.

Why not focus on the potential future for this young spelling-bee winner? According to a 2012 article in Slate, “the last six [National Spelling Bee winners] to graduate from high school have attended college at Harvard, Cornell, MIT, Yale, Tufts, and Duke” (Palmer, 2012). Impressive!

When will the world stop accentuating the physical appearance of young girls (and women) and only emphasize their extraordinary cognitive abilities?

Lauren Kane-Sample

Homeschooling mother of 3 girls and 1 boy

Composition Instructor for 4 Universities

Reference citation:

Palmer, B. (2012). Doctors. D-O-C-T-O-R-S. Doctors. What do spelling-bee winners do when they grow up? Retrieved from ww.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/06/scripps_national_spelling_bee_what_happens_to_the_winners_later_in_life_.html

Padagogy Wheel

I've just been introduced to an awesome resource for moms and teachers to help visualize and use Ipad apps for learning. This model offers layers from learning objectives to activities to suit the needs and style of different learners and instructors. Each section is interactive and links to apps that can support different approaches to learning.

http://www.unity.net.au/padwheel/padwheelposter.pdf

Writing Webliography

URL	Site Name	Highlights
OWL	The Purdue Online Writing Lab	Comprehensive online writing resource.
Bedford Guide	The Bedford Guide for College Writers	Do not need to own this textbook to utilize this site. It offers writing resources and quizzes.
Guide to Grammar & Writing	Guide to Grammar and Writing: Capital Community College	Comprehensive online writing resource.
Daily Grammar Blog	Daily Grammar Blog	Blog gives a daily grammar rule with examples.
Grammar Girl	Grammar Girl: Quick & Dirty Tricks	Complex grammar rules and are made simple.
OED	Oxford English Dictionary	Meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words.
Merriam-Webster	The Merriam-Webster Dictionary	An online dictionary.
Roget's Thesaurus	Roget’s Thesaurus	An online thesaurus.
APA	American Psychological Association	APA Formatting Guidelines.
APA	APA Style Blog	APA Formatting Guidelines.
Citation Generator	Son of Citation Machine	Citation machine that offers in-text and reference citations.
Citation Generator	Citation Builder	Citation machine that offers reference citations and allows students to notice the differences with each format.
Citation Generator	KnightCite	Citation machine that offers reference citations and details multimedia sources.
Free Scholarly Journals	Oxford Journals	Open access to more than 100 scholarly journals.

Happy fliptMOMS' Day!

My favorite Mother's Day gift is actually that oh-so-sweet breakfast-in-bed made entirely by our loving keikis.

And it's not my favorite gift because our kiddos were thoughtful or creative or early risers. It's not even because I was able to sleep a little longer and not take breakfast orders, clean the dishes, and help all of the above get ready for church.

For me, the over-sugared oatmeal and diluted coffee is oh-so-sweet and wonderful because it shows the early signs of self-reliance in our children.

When they first tie their shoelaces without our help, I see signs of independence. 

And we do a little dance. 

When they wake up, make their beds, get dressed, and begin school on their own, I see signs of self-sufficiency.

And we do a little dance.

When they make me a Mother’s Day breakfast that is vegan and gluten-free and then sing me a self-created Mother’s Day song, I know our kiddos are well on their way to being self-possessed, confident, and creative individuals.

And we all do a little dance together.

"To find yourself, think for yourself." Socrates

Happy fliptMOMS' Day!  

Back to the office

One of us fliptmoms is headed back to the work-a-day lifestyle- suiting up and showing up 40 hours a week on campus. And it's me. I haven't worked a full time job at the office for over 15 years. And even then it was only for 6 months.

Here goes... I'll be working for a local private university to help them launch an online doctorate degree.

What I'm not looking forward to:

• Higher gas bill. More pollution.  
• Less time with my children. More guilt.
• Less time in my garden. More weeds.
• Earlier mornings. More bitchin' and moanin'.

What I am looking forward to:

• Listening to books on Audible during the commute. More time to read!
• Doing the job itself. More creativity and productivity!
• Working with my new colleagues. More socializing, less social media!
• Getting out of the house more often. More showers!

So, now our blog may have more to offer for more parents- stay-at-home, work-from-home and work-at-work parents. Wish me luck in this transition.

the fliptmom neurosis

An irrefutable constant about me is that I love to read. The only challenge I've ever seen to that fundamental has been the recent disruption of social media, and even that is mostly an interactive form of reading.

I also love to take ownership over those gems I come across when I read by flagging them for later. As a teacher this habit is useful and makes it easier for me to cross reference with students in the online classroom- unlike the face to face superstars, an online teacher has the luxury of looking up that "tip of the tongue" example that is just so apropo. 

I also have a three year old boy. And my bookmarking flags look like this:

So more than half the time I find them stuck to my son and all over the floor like this:

I laughed the first time. Then realized he had not pulled them out of the package but out of my dang book! I've hidden them in drawers, started putting them up high. But I still occasionally end up leaving them out next to a book and coming back to find the inevitable.

As flags should be, these are highly symbolic for what my children have been doing to my brain. For my reading habits, I make wise choices, I use the tools available, I establish good routines. Yet, this little guy doesn't care. Not because he's heartless but because he has no idea I exist beyond his reach... and hey, look! sticky colors!

In his wake, I lost my cool. my collected wisdom. my place.

And the neurosis sets in. 

Asking stupid questions. Why did you do this? Why can't I just read and mark my pages? Why can't I have anything???  

Pondering inconvenient truths. These flags are all wasted now. They're really a waste to begin with. Is this sustainable?

Listing the inconveniences. Now I've got to clean this mess up. Pick these up. And read this entire book over!

Reporting the injury. He got into my dang flags again. I had just finished re-marking this new edition. How much money have we wasted on them now?

Broadcasting the banality. This might make a good blog post. It's perfect for fliptmoms. I'll have to put some flags on the little guy and take a pic. *serendipity interceded and no staging was necessary. 

Rich content microblogging

I just learned something new on Twitter!

Using Slideshare, you can embed a full presentation into one tweet.

I have seen pictures and videos embedded, but this is the first time I had seen a slide presentation embedded, and it was from my own tweet. I uploaded a presentation onto Slideshare this morning, and used their Twitter link to share it. When I went to view it on my Twitter feed, I saw that the slide presentation is embedded in the tweet itself.

I find this exciting because so many people say that social media networks like Twitter only allow for snippets of learning or may be damaging to our attention spans. I think this is a legitimate concern, but I have found participating in Professional Learning Networks through these outlets to be quite edifying. I follow links to in-depth articles, I view informative or inspiring videos, and now I see that traditional forms of presentation adapt well to microblogging as well.

There are limitations with Slideshare. For example, only the most traditional forms of image + text do well in that format. I like to use animations and non-traditional layouts for live presentations, and this doesn't translate well for Slideshare. But there is a time and place for quick tidbits of info that your audience may find useful and slides offer a more engaging way to present some material than just blogging.

I plan to keep this in mind as an alternative to some of my blogging. I can start picturing PowerPoint as another blogging and microblogging tool through the use of Slideshare.

The Rainbow Inside Her

I sobbed uncontrollably when a developmental pediatrician told me our 6-year old daughter may never go to college. In front of a nursing student, the doctor told me it was okay to mourn the loss of the child we thought we would have. She then advised me to consider genetic testing if we were going to have more children. If I had my wits about me, I would have said, “Why? To ensure that we do not have another child like her? How dare you!”

After a minor mêlée with depression, I picked myself up and did what any over-educated parent would do – got a second opinion.

As the impressive pediatric neurologist from Johns Hopkins walked in the room, I guiltily hoped this doctor would disagree with that heartless pediatrician, tell me our child would outgrow all challenges, and successfully graduate from college one day. Instead he said the following, “If I could predict the future, then I would quit my job and go on Oprah.” Oddly, this ambivalent and noncommittal comment gave me hope.

Yet, the depression arrived again, but this time it was not because I worried about our child’s future. This time it was because I had allowed my intellectual prejudices to define and limit her happiness by academic victory alone.

Our daughter did not talk until she was four because she had an expressive and receptive language disorder, yet she is now a voracious reader and a competent speller. She has a processing disorder, and yet she can play the piano and do long division. These remarkable successes impress me as I watch her overcome significant cognitive challenges that are out of her control.

However, what inspires me the most about our daughter is the kaleidoscope of colors that radiate from her soul. She befriends and hugs the watermelons in our garden. She sings to narrate her daily activities, and the melodies are rhythmic and jubilant. She remembers everyone’s birthday because it is a joyous occasion for them. Typically, she accepts the big stuff in life casually and the little stuff intensely.

The rainbow inside our daughter brings me pleasure and joy, but sadly, it does not sufficiently remove my fears about her future. What I have discovered and will rediscover as our journey continues is that our daughter carries hope, faith, and courage inside her; they are the rays of her rainbow heart.

And I need to remove the labels from my mind and support her imaginative spirit and prevent the world (and myself) from inhibiting and restructuring her variegated path. E.E. Cummings said that “it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are,” and I must give her the sun and rain to do so.

Flexibility & Security

The two of us fliptmoms have found work as adjunct online faculty to help us support the stay and work from home lifestyle with our kids. And we appreciate this opportunity.

However, there are many downsides to being adjunct faculty with any university, public, private, for-profit, on campus or online. Namely, no benefits and little job security. 

One reason I decided to pursue my PhD after teaching for 10 years with a Master's degree was so I could find a tenure-track position and move beyond adjunct. I graduated with my PhD two years ago, and I have not found a tenure-track position yet. There are many discussions in higher education forums that point to a decline in tenure-track faculty and growing numbers of adjunct faculty. Universities are taking a WalMart approach to employment in keeping them part-time and temporary. 

You can read an interesting collection of essays on this topic in Academic Apartheid: Waging the Adjunct War. This collection of essays addresses the question: What does it mean for higher education when an individual in the fast food industry makes more per hour than an adjunct who holds three degrees?

Part of shaping a fliptmoms lifestyle has included facing this struggle between flexibility and security. As the security of my husband's job starts to look shakier, I am now seeking out full time work with benefits. Whereas the flexibility of being home with the kids was our first priority when we had health care through his work, my mind is now shifting towards job security and benefits as first priority. If having affordable health care weren't inextricably tied to full time employment, my husband and I might be more steadily working on launching our own business and both working from home as our back-up plan instead of scrambling to find another employer. In some ways, it makes me feel like a coward, and in others I feel it is my duty as a mother to be sure the kids have economic security and access to health care.

This is a tough transition, but I am glad I feel prepared for it and that I've put so much time and energy into re-tooling myself for the job market over the last several years. I also feel lucky to have these choices that may not have been available to parents in past generations. 

Flipped for Home-School

We never intended to homeschool, but here we are, and our lives were flipped in the best possible way because of this decision.  

Sadly, I think we hoped our sweet squiggly-peg daughter would fit in the square-peg of a traditional school setting. It took us 3 ½ years to realize that the best place for our daughter to learn was at home, so we took her out of the “safe haven” of a private school, and our homeschooling journey began.

Little did we know that within a few years I would advocate to homeschool all of our children. 

Our daughter is now in the fourth grade and excelling. She is still challenged by certain academic subjects and skills, but she reads Moby Dick and Charlotte’s Web, takes art class, and plays the piano. 

Our son is in the second grade, and he unknowingly motivates his older sister to challenge herself. Our 4-year old begs to do school every day, and our 1-year old garbles out historical timeline facts hoping to be like her siblings. 

A dear friend said to me, “Lauren, your children are growing up in a home where education takes place at the kitchen table, and they live where they learn.” I could have cried. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to spend 12 years with my children teaching and learning with them at home. 

Millions of families have flipped from traditional schooling to homeschooling and have proven this is a viable and successful educational alternative on all levels. We are living proof!

And I have actually returned to the workplace, but I work from home, and teach composition courses online for 4 different universities. I love my flipped life!

Disclaimer: I am not one who believes that homeschooling is the only way to educate children. Each family is unique. Our daughter has epilepsy, a sensory integration disorder, and an auditory processing disorder. We believe home-schooling has given her confidence and a safe place to be “different.”

I felt the need to prove to my husband that if we homeschooled our children, they could still go to Ivy League schools, so I sent him these articles when I wanted to homeschool all of our children:

Foster, C. (2000, Dec.) In a class by themselves. Stanford Magazine. Retrieved from 

http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=39384

NPR. (2010, July 21). Cab-Schooled student earns ticket to Harvard. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128674314&

Sheehy, K. (2012). Home-Schooled teens ripe for college: Myths about unsocialized home-schoolers are false, and most are well prepped for college, experts say. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2012/06/01/home-schooled-teens-ripe-for-college

I recently found this online journal:

Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives "aims to become a focal point for the cumulative development of knowledge, understanding, and scholarship on educational alternatives worldwide, and aims to contribute to the visibility and quality of scholarship on educational alternatives."

http://www.othereducation.stir.ac.uk/index.php/OE/index

Flipped?

We chose the name fliptmoms for this blog because we are both teaching in flipped environments and realized that the concepts associated with flipped learning might also be used to describe our work-life balancing act. Our lifestyles as work-from-home moms have been flipped by technology just as much as learning trends have.

In preparing to write this post about why we use the term "flipped," I started with a basic approach- straight to the OED. This was a fun exercise because even the fairly recent edition I have from the late 20th century had not taken into account the meaning of "flip" as we use it here. However, the original definition does highlight the influence of a change agent that causes the flipping motion of an object: "to put into motion; to give a flip."

In the conversation about flipped learning these days, technology seems to be the most frequently mentioned change agent. And this is true for much of our flipped lifestyles as work-from-home moms as well, but we'd also like to explore what other influences we find in modern life that have put new work-life balance challenges and benefits into motion.

In an earlier post in this blog- Stay at Home or Work from Home, we offered resources on considering the flipped lifestyles of the fliptmom. Here we offer a few resources on flipped learning:

Strayer, Jeremy F. The effects of the classroom flip on the learning environment: a comparison of learning activity in a traditional classroom and a flip classroom that used an intelligent tutoring system. Diss. The Ohio State University, 2007.

http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Strayer%20Jeremy.pdf?osu1189523914

Bergmann, Jonathan, and Aaron Sams. "How the flipped classroom was born." The Daily Riff Online (2011).

Tucker, Bill. "The flipped classroom." Education Next 12.1 (2012): 82-83.

http://hdexplorations.eportalnow.net/uploads/7/1/0/0/7100009/ednext_20121_btucker.pdf

Bergmann, Jonathan. "Flip Your Classroom: Talk To Every Student In Every Class Every Day Author: Jonathan Bergmann, Aaron Sams, Publisher: Inte." (2012): 100.

http://www.openisbn.org/download/1564843157.pdf

Koller, Daphne. "Death knell for the lecture: Technology as a passport to personalized education." New York Times 5 (2011).

http://www.seas.upenn.edu/about-seas/overseers/pdf/DaphneKoller_TechnologyasaPassporttoPersonalizedEducation_NYTimes.pdf

 We'd like to hear from you about your flipped learning and flipped lifestyle experiences. Find us on twitter @fliptmoms. Or use the links on the right to check us out on other networks.

Endless Alphabet

For the last week, my mother-in-law has been telling me that my two year old son only wants to play one ABC game everyday after school with her. Last night I got a chance to sit down with them and check it out.

Wow! Endless Alphabet is a very well-designed learning app. The quirky characters are engaging. The letters sound themselves out as the user moves them... ingenious. 

Check out my two year old son, learning, sharing & having fun:

My 8 year old daughter even enjoyed it with him, and since I hear the developers plan to add new words, perhaps it will be a learning tool for both of them:

My social media addiction

After resisting a cell phone until well into 2006, then acquiescing to a smartphone in 2008, I now find myself to be a full-blown smartphone, social media addict. I recognized the problem last summer during the 2012 Olympics when I failed at my attempt to stay uninformed until the nightly NBC coverage. I just couldn't stay off my apps! 

My phone app social media cycle includes:
Email
Instagram
Pinterest
Facebook
Linked In
Twitter 
Goodreads
Learnist

I am juggling 4 identities for some of these apps: 1 personal, 1 professional, 1 political and 1 now for this blog.

I may have recognized the problem over 6 months ago, but I still haven't solved it. I still must fight the urge to check my phone obsessively all day long- I'll stop to take a look while preparing dinner, attending my daughter's ice skating lessons, and even going to the restroom! 

I first tried instituting a daily schedule. I would only check my phone while having my morning coffee and lunch, while waiting in the pick up line for my daughter and after bed time. This didn't work- having that much exposure made it more difficult to resist the urge between times.

As my New Year's Resolution this year, I decided to uninstall all of my social media apps from my phone each Sunday night and not re-install them until Friday evening. I only publicly announced this intention about Facebook. 

Week 1- What a novelty. I loved the freedom. All the laundry got done and the family's lunches were packed each night before bed!
Week 2- I popped on to Facebook Friday morning instead of waiting to the evening. This is now the "rule." I replaced Facebook with an obsession for Goodreads on my PC and entered over 500 books I've read in my lifetime and wrote over 150 reviews for those books.
Week 3- I reinstalled Instagram and Pinterest on Thursday to make the wait for Facebook easier.
Week 4- I started sharing things on Facebook through other media, but without visiting the site. 
Week 5- I started peeking at my husband's phone and looking at my profile. I didn't uninstall Goodreads, Instagram or Pinterest during the week and used them frequently. I became a more reliable blogger and Twitter participant for my professional identity.
Week 6- I reinstalled Twitter and started hashtag gaming again- something I'd stopped before the holidays. 
Week 7- I started creating content for this blog we started planning a few months ago. I logged onto Facebook in the name of this blog. I peeked around at my profile and my friend's profiles. I reinstalled the Facebook app on my phone on a Tuesday. I stayed up until midnight looking at political jokes about the SOTU on Twitter. I snuck over to my husband's bedside table to peek at Facebook newsfeed of our circle of friends on his phone. I could barely wake up this morning to  exercise.

So here I am- faced with a true addiction. I must learn to manage it. 

Take your flipped life balance inventory

I've been looking for ways to better balance my time, space and brain waves as a work from home mom, and I thought I'll just do a venn diagram and sort out where I should separate the professional from the personal.

First, I did a listing brainstorm of my Top 3 interests, spaces, routines, web habits, roles, tech uses and goals: 

Next, I made a venn diagram and placed the listed items along the continuum of personal to professional. And found much more overlap than I expected:

With this much overlap, how was I going to sort out what to manage? It's clear in this diagram that I keep mom and teacher roles separate, as well as laundry time and online classroom time. Great. That's a start. But how to sort out the majority of items that overlap? I decided to consider whether each one was more or less challenging because of the overlap. What overlaps felt positive because of synergy? Which ones felt negative because of difficulty managing?

Voila! This helped. I have quite a bit of positive overlap that I could try to optimize and identified the areas where I need to find management strategies for my time, space and brainwaves.

I'll be focusing on these areas in future posts. 

In the meantime, if this felt like a useful exercise to you. Check it out & do it yourself! I made a one page, neater worksheet than my scribbles. Click to download the .pdf:

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Public, Private or Home School

Along side our decisions about how to balance motherhood and career goals, we find ourselves faced with the challenge of nurturing our children now and preparing them for the future. Roxanne has two children, a 2nd grader who is in public school, and a 3 year old in Montessorri school. Lauren has 4 children: she homeschools her oldest daughter with special needs, her 2nd grade son, who was in a private Christian school, is also homeschooled now, and her two youngest are still learning from their siblings at home. In this blog, we plan to include our personal flipped learning experiences as Moms of school-aged children.

Stay-at-home or Work-from-home?

We fliptmoms decided to start this blog because we know our experiences are not unique. Many women of our generation set out on ambitious career paths, obtaining expert credentials and worthwhile work experiences, only to find themselves torn between family duties and career goals. We have both tried to overcome this challenges by piecing together work from home careers in education- and we are not alone. Today's stay-at-home moms have their own home businesses, work online, or continue immersion in their field through professional learning networks.

A couple of enlightening articles on this topic:

The New Stay-at-Home Mom by Charlotte Lavala 

http://www.parenting.com/article/the-new-stay-at-home-mom

Women, Work and Motherhood: A Sampler of Recent Pew Research Findings by Kim Parker

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/04/13/women-work-and-motherhood/

We fliptmoms both teach online at the university level. We have jobs with for-profit institutions as well as traditional public and private universities.  In this blog, we will address issues of flipped classroom management and innovation.