🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Clone your class, save some time

📼 Move from a Blockbuster classroom to a Netflix classroom

Do you remember Blockbuster Video? The stores. The racks of rental videos. The membership card. (The late fees.)

In the book Breaking the Blockbuster Model, you’ll see how to level up … past the Movie Theater Model and Blockbuster Model to a Netflix / Streaming Model.

It re-envisions the traditional classroom — with practical advice and the pedagogy to back it up.

Check out Breaking the Blockbuster Model in paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Clone your class, save some time

When Nate Ridgway was teaching high school social studies, he had heard of the “flipped classroom” model.

Parts of it appealed to him, but he wasn’t a big fan of “direct instruction at home, practice at school.”

Then, he writes in Breaking the Blockbuster Model, it hit him …

Why flip just direct instruction? What would it look like if I flipped everything?

Instead of a flipped classroom, he called it something else.

A cloned classroom.

What is it? “A digital copy of my classroom that mirrors—to the greatest extent possible—my physical one and is accessible to students, their families, and myself, 24/7/365.”

His cloned lessons lived on a webpage where students could find all necessary materials. They included:

• Slide presentations that students could read through

• Links to bellringer activities to kick off class

• A video of him presenting the slides

• An iorad tutorial guiding students step-by-step through the lesson

• Documents with syllabus and study strategies

Learning about Nate’s cloned classroom idea reminded me of a practice that can further help you save time with this … and it deals with recording videos.

Recording videos can seem time-consuming.

Often, teachers will say, “I don’t have time to record instructional videos. I just got done teaching all day and I don’t have time to do it again.”

Here are two practices to save a TON of time recording videos:

1. Record yourself teaching it the first time. Set up your laptop with a tool like Screencastify, Loom, ScreenPal, or Microsoft Flip. Aim the webcam toward you. Make sure you’re close enough that the microphone can pick you up. Then teach!

2. If a student asks you for help with something, just record your student interaction with your webcam and microphone. Explain it in the best way possible while recording it. Then put it someplace (LMS, class webpage, etc.) where students can access it if they need help.

After using both of these strategies, you’ll have instructional videos that are authentically you — and they won’t take extra time.

A couple quick reminders from Nate:

• Not everything has to be cloned.

• Cloning ideally should give us more time to focus on what matters: our students.

• Not everything has to be cloned at once.

Here’s how Nate suggests you get started:

1. Break it down: Deconstruct your standards, content, and skills.

2. Create/curate: Build and collect your lesson materials. Think about how students/families can access them.

3. Support: Create supports that students might need if they use the digital version all by itself.

4. Distribute: Share your lesson and use your cloned setup in class.

Love this idea? Want to learn more? Nate writes about it in Chapter 5 of his book, Breaking the Blockbuster Model. (I was the developmental editor of the book and fell in love with it as I collaborated with Nate to publish it!

🗄 Template

🎮 Create a multimedia game with Adobe Express

In the latest creative challenge from Adobe Express they are making it easy for students to create an Express video to share three clues about a mystery topic. You can also win a brand-new red Adobe Express branded Stanley tumbler. Complete the submission form to be entered to win. Challenge ends March 31st, 2024.

📺 Watch the tutorial

The tutorial video walks your students through the steps of creating a guessing game using the template. In the example, the mystery topic is Marie Curie with the clues:

• She and her husband discovered radium changing how we see the world.

• She won two Nobel prizes for her groundbreaking work in science.

• Her discoveries helped fight cancer with a treatment called radiation therapy.

🗃️Get the template

Grab the template. Pick a topic. Give three clues and go!

This PDF from Adobe Express has everything you need to create a fun multimedia project about any topic you like, complete with animations, transitions, voiceovers and videos.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!