A newer trend in education is called the flipped classroom. Some teachers are sending lectures home with students-such as assigning them a video module online to watch at night. Then in the classroom, they are doing the homework and discussion.Here are two tools you can use to incorporate this concept into the corporate classroom as well.
Twitter
Use Twitter to send out pre-reading assignments to those who are scheduled to take your workshops. This does require the students to be signed up on Twitter. You can then tweet out a message which includes a link to a learning module, blog, video log (vlog) or YouTube segment that can be assimilated before the classroom. You can use a hashtag chosen for your class so students can easily follow the tweets. A tweet relevant to this article might look like this:
Additional uses for Twitter and training can be found at http://twitpic.com/2oy8cq. #bpg2012
The #bpg2012 is the hashtag we've chosen for our fall conference. We checked to make sure it wasn't being used by anyone else (because using the same hashtag as other groups can get really awkward) and then adopted it. It's an easy way to filter content or to make a statement such as #WhyMe.
When creating their own accounts, twitterers can also choose to have certain tweets emailed to them in case they don't check twitter often.
If you're interested in a basic Twitter tutorial, you can go to http://tinyurl.com/BPG0809
Facebook
A lot of teachers are using group pages on Facebook to create a collection of documents as well as discussion on topics outside of the classroom. As you create the group page, you choose what level of security the page has and whether people need to be accepted into the group by an administrator (yourself, probably) for heightened privacy. You can even do group polls which can be helpful when deciding alternate times to meet or deciding on a group project. Facebook will also allow you to use a shared email address created by Facebook for your group.
For more information on creating a group page and how data security works, check on Facebook's groups page.
What are your thoughts on the flipped classroom? How are you implementing it in your workshops? Let us know!
Image courtesy of jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
