I recently undertook a challenging experience and presented at the national FlipCon Australia conference on the Gold Coast ( #FlipConAus). It was an amazing experience in personal growth, reflection and networking.
I presented 2 workshops: “How we flipped and you can too” and also “Flipping for Free”.
You might ask how I ended up facing this challenge, well in simplest terms it was with a very firm shove. I was approached by my previous principal at the beginning of this year with a flyer to apply for a presenters spot at the conference and my initial response was sure I want to go but surely I am not qualified enough to present at a conference like this.
Previously I have run numerous professional development and workshops but these tend to be at a school level not “national”. However with much encouragement I applied to present and much to my astonishment I was accepted, which caused me to reflect on the fact that maybe I did have experience that was worth sharing with other like minded individuals.
When I arrived at the conference for the pre-workshop day (a totally invaluable experience) I was astounded at the scope of representations attending the conference. For some reason I had imagined that it would mainly be Queensland educators and in the first hour I learnt that attendees had travelled from all other states to be able to network and plan for a future that incorporated flipped teaching into their classroom.
On my first day I attended a full day workshop run by Joel Speranza (@joelbsperanza), and I was inspired by the depth of knowledge that he presented and the quality of his presentation. In the mean time I was also conscious of the fact that this was what I was going to be “competing” against in my workshops. In this one day I learnt plenty and was able to reflect on my practice. Thanks to Joel I gained new perspectives on aspects of flipped learning and how it can be incorporated into classroom practice in way that I hadn’t considered and also consolidated for me that I was well on my way in my flipped teaching journey.
My first session presented my thoughts about planning for a successful flipped classroom. This was the session that I felt most confident about and you can see a great synopsis here: https://c21stteaching.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/flipconaus-review-day-three-part-one/ Continue reading →
Educating The Digital Learner 