Anatomy of a (Flipped) Meme

(See also, part 2: The Curious Case of Flipped-Bloom's)

You know the 'Flipped Learning' meme? 

Flip it?

The Flip?

The Flipped Classroom? 

Okay then, smartie, have you noticed its new iteration, 'Flipped Bloom's'? It sprung like a bolt out of the blue not 3 weeks ago.

Out of nowhere? And why now? Why traction, now?

Curiouser and curiouser. Flipped Bloom's next post, first a prequel:

 

The Prequel: 'Flipped Learning'

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron Sams in Denver, and picked his brains over the history of the "Flipped Learning" meme. 

Sams told me, "Dan Pink ran an article in 2010, November, and he called this whole shifting direct instruction out of the class on video the 'Fisch Flip' referencing Karl Fisch.

"Karl said, 'Hey! You got to talk to these guys down in Woodland Park because that’s who we talked to.'  So we immediately got stuck to the term."

Sams and his friend Bergmann were about to publish a book on podcasting, vodcasting etc, but with Pink using the term 'Flip' they reworked the keywords in their book and called it 'Flip-Mastery'.

They put in their book for publishing in February, 2011. As it happened, not two weeks later the illustrious Sal Khan gave his Khan Academy TED talk. In the talk he says "And the teachers would write, saying, 'We've used your videos to flip the classroom.'" He uses the phrase 'flip' like it was already old news. 

So Salman Khan heard teachers using the word 'Flip' before 2011. Maybe they'd read Dan Pink's article from the UK newspaper, the Telegraph? (Or a much earlier article - see below)

Pink + Khan seems to have made the idea go high-level viral. Khan in particular acted as a 'super-node' in the network, and ideas can jump fractal scale dimensions when championed in a space that has everyone's attention.

What's in a Meme?

That which we call a rose...

A meme is an idea on wheels. It has its driver's license and its off around the world, thanks!

It can only drive Class A vehicles, and they don't take many passengers. If it's going to go viral, it can't carry much with it.

This is both the strength and weakness of the 'Flipped Learning' meme.

To my mind, mainly strength.

The literal meaning 'Swap the activities of school and home', is in itself a delightfully, scrumptiously, subversive, disruptive message; just the thing to sweep out cobwebs, challenge some thinking just where it needs challenging, because for the love of all things kind and sweet we do not need any more teacher talk, thanks universe. Swap the stuff OUTSIDE this rattling cage for what's IN IT. Amen, brother. 

THAT meaning is, of course, a parody of the term anyway, but parody is where the magic begins. 

I don't know any teacher who has so crude a view of learning that they hear 'Flipped Learning' and immediately think to literally flip class activity and home activity, lecture and application, end of story, and slap their hands together and say 'mah werk heah eez dun!' 

Rather, what happens, and I think this goes to the way the meme works, is when you first hear it and understand the literal implication, you envisage the caricature, but then, and this is magical, you bounce of the caricature into something more nuanced.

So, in a funny way, the meme works really nicely.

Step #1 Teacher hears the meme.

Step #2 They react against it as a caricature and formulate their own more balanced model.

Step #3 They pass on the meme, often in the form of criticism of it. 

('Can't talk honey, I must blog, someone on the internet is wrong!') 

Just go to google blog search and search for Flipped Learning to see this effect. 100s of blogs trying to correct the straw-man notion!

Aaron Sams told me, "I mean, I’ve been playing defense on the internet primarily because of misconceptions of people trying to pitch in whole lots, [saying] 'is it just this?'". 

"It’s 'Think about what the best use your time with your students face to face is and if you can shift something out of that time so they can access it asynchronously.'"

The meme begs this question, and it's a question it doesn't hurt to ask. 

Sams isn't locking into any model! Nor are his students or their friendly robot. 

Like every buzz-word, to travel it has to be hopelessly simplified.

The phrase, "Think about what the best use of your time with your students face to face is and if you can shift something out of that time so they can access it asynchronously"-classroom doesn't roll of the tongue.

Miraculously, the simpler phrase "Flip" unpacks itself in each brain it encounters, through an automatic unfolding mechanism called 'critique'. This story is archetypical.

In computing terms, the 'flip' virus invokes our reliable critiquing apparatus, allowing it to travel light, and poses as straw-man to intensify traction. Watch the edubloggers all take to Wordpress, one giant army, to correct the misconception! Clever meme!

It knows! 

It smiles to itself. It beckons: "unpack me, then copy me and pass me on!"

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

So Dan Pink writes about the 'Fisch Flip', Sams and Bergmann write a book, and Khan gives a TED talk, and KABOOM! The idea explodes, and the rest is history.

I hear you say, "Steve, flipped learning goes way, way back before 2011."

...and was being applied instinctively and intuitively all over the place. I was applying related concepts in 2002 via a website called 'Nicenet.org' and when Moodle arrived in 2005, I went ballistic. I dare say you did too.

Prehistory of a Meme

If you had your ear to the ground you'd know the poorer, clumsier, older brother meme, the veritable proto-meme, the (Baker's Saturn to Khan's Zeus):

"Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage."

Too many syllables for the proletariat, but the phrase gathered traction, and when I heard it from MrsAngell a few years ago it stuck with me.  Wikipedia tells me the proto-meme came from a conference paper in 2000 "The classroom flip: using web course management tools to become the guide by the side" by J. Wesley Baker. This is pre-Web 2.0.

He even uses the word 'flip' in the title, but that didn't seem to travel at the time. 

Our attention spans were longer before Twitter came along. The brevity of 'Flip'; the sheer economy of character spaces, was not a crucial advantage. A cost of 4 units, versus the 47 of 'Guide by the side instead of sage on the stage' now makes all the difference. It's all pure-poetry now, and nimble memes exploit efficiency to dominate. 

Ha ha! 

Other authors in 2000 were referring to 'Inverting' the classroom. Yah, not so catchy. Try saying 'invert' out loud a few times, then say 'flip'. Now, which one gets a girlfriend?

The Wikipedia article pushes further back into the 1990s and Eric Mazur. Would the idea have ever bunny hopped up the fractal scale dimension without that long beginning?

Why pause the time machine there? Why stop with the internet? 

The difference between an interactive video and a textbook is only a matter of degrees.

If a 1960s teacher said 'read about calculus tonight in your book and tomorrow we'll use it to do something crazy', how is that not Flipped-Learning?

The internet just a really big book, on a continuum since some Sumerians got sick of counting sheep, grabbed a chisel and a rock, and composed one of the world's earliest web-pages.

Collective Brainwaves

So it's not that the idea is new, ain't nothing new, it's all just short shorts.

I'm just fascinated at the turn of events that lead to its fractal-jump in late 2010, from rumbling in the background to a edtech popculture icon.

You can have a great idea, but you can't force traction.

It's Fractal

When I say it's fractal I mean the meme jumped a level of magnitude in late 2010, early 2011. A google trends analysis on searches for the phrase 'flipped' seems to support this:

A Joke

Have you heard the joke:

Q: What's the difference between teacher-talk and a video?

A: At least you can turn a video off.

For this much we are grateful.

...to be continued. In Part 2, the meme spawns a child: "Flipped Bloom's"

Building the Education Revolution Spaces

International readers, the background to this post is a huge financial investment by the Australian government in new school capital works progams as one of several initiatives to counteract the effects of the Global Financial Crisis. The investment was called "Building the Education Revolution" (B.E.R.).

Here's a video from Balwyn Primary school in Victoria:

The video appears to be published by 'Furnware', a furniture company, but the link at the end of the video goes to the Victorian education website on the B.E.R. There are links from there to standard templates for schools. I can't really tell from the templates if they're any good, but there are some good signs. The dot points on a typical template seem to be on the right track, as does this video with key architects. They really emphasise the adaptability of the buildings to future changes. The thinking is spot on.

I'd love to hear from Victorian colleague about the templates. I'm not exactly bowled over by video footage of a range of spaces but it looks like there's some good stuff in the mix. (Me, the measure of all things, of course!)

Footage from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, unfortunately, is another matter.

Here's an overview of one of their templates:

The concept of 'computer nooks', is of course dead in the water. That's why you soft-code your spaces. "Team-teaching" is the closest we get to innovation in the NSW video, which isn't very close at all I'm afraid. If I'm depressed by the end of it, this second overview doesn't cheer me up:

There's a complete absence of vision for what is the chance of a generation.

I beg of readers to correct me or add information in the comments. Maybe the Victorian PR machine is just better?

One thing I landed on for NSW was these reports. 

In this interim report (warning - it's a 10mb Word doc), page 54, we read:

The managing contractors engaged by NSW adopted existing concept design templates developed for NSW DET and prepared these designs for construction. These design templates developed by managing contractors were used in 97 per cent of NSW Government school P21 projects. In some instances the design templates were not well suited to schools with space constraints. This was observed by the Taskforce in inner-city areas

I gather, from this, that 97% of participating NSW government schools had template buildings that were already kicking around the D.E.T. when the funding program was launched.

In Victoria, on the other hand:

The Victorian Government recently developed a suite of design templates for new school buildings in accordance with that state’s Victorian Schools Plan. The Program has provided the Victorian DEECD with an opportunity to accelerate its state-wide roll out of new learning facilities and apply the new design templates. The Taskforce observed the Victorian Government design templates to be of high quality. The template development was hastened to take advantage of the Program and in some instances the designs have yet to benefit from feedback from earlier projects. 

However, nationally:

Design templates were not used by the majority of non-government schools.

The Victorian videos inspired me, expecially the first one.

The NSW one, however, made me feel I was back in the 1980s. It worries me, the cultural inertia that spaces carry with them, and therefore the braking effect the BER investment has the potential to cause on the learning paradigm-shift we so desperately need. 

Facebook is the East India Company

Just a thought, that Facebook has some similarities with the East India Company. The East India Company, a private company, functioned as a soverign nation, able to print its own money, employ a standing army and make territorial acquisitions. Backed by England, it was chartered to move into the new spaces (not so new for people already living there of course - hey, want some opium?)

The new spaces in recent years are not physical but informational.

Physical space is made up of information flow. I can't be bothered to explain why but it is. 

Now we have information technology, we are able to create new spaces. It is as if, rather than sailing to new countries to conquer and exploit them, we now create new spaces, to conquer and exploit them.

Facebook is the new East India Company. Its territory is made up of information provided by us. It is an information-scape that it rules and exploits, and shapes, and remakes.

It is like the East India Company because it is a private company in charge of a territory, like a government.

It's no wonder various governments have attempted to regulate Facebook's privacy system. Information is space, so this is about territorial authority. 

Bubbles of new space are forming: as information flow cascades, with companies talking 'big data' and putting that information in better formation (making meaning from it), as collaboration and collective intelligence moves to new orders of magnitude, and as web startups, with unpredictable success, get traction.

These are new geometries. New lands. With them come East India Companies, sovereign in their spaces. 

Boldly go where no one has gone before...

The Hunger Games & Critical Literacy, Post 4 of 4.

Part 4, Conclusion – The Hunger Games

(Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

I've defined critical literacy as the ability to both:

#1 observe, analyse, deconstruct a system (aka the observer’s perspective, from without), and

#2 engage with the system, complicitly but seeking agency.

Now then, The Hunger Games, in a long line of texts where the protagonist seeks an exit sign from a curated system. 

The Hunger Games is a critical literacy lolly-shop. It is metacognitive bliss. It goes to the heart of reality and representation. Katniss Everdeen’s first-person journey switches frame and context throughout the series, each context deconstructed around dilemma-questions amounting to “In whose interest is it that I see reality this way?” aka “who is exploiting me here?” The actual Hunger Games at the centre of the books is a metaphor for the wider game being played across the districts and the Capitol.

The Hunger Games in The Hunger Games is, of course, no game at all, but a political apparatus. The distinction between 'game' and 'system' collapses. It is an invitation to the reader to deconstruct their own contexts, and ask “Whose game am I playing here?”

Hence my obsession with game-language being applied to schooling. Schooling is a system. Game-language helps us recognise systems as systems, drawing attention to artifice, implying the quesion: "How might this be redesigned?"

Collins’ grotesque portrayal of the media, especially reality TV, diagnoses Mode #2 disguised as Mode #1, i.e. I engage the media as if in the shoes of an outside observer, but am in fact, without knowing, complicit in a Mode #2 system. This is the worst possible scenario: I think I’m observing, but I’m participating. It may indeed be a critique of my very distinction between Mode #1 and #2.

For instance, refusing to play ball, is still playing ball on a wider playing field.

You can quit your job, and live in the desert in a shack, but this still constitutes a legitimate game move, employed by many others in the past, and many to come. It’s a clichéd move, not original at all. It amounts to participation, albeit with the illusion of pure Mode #1 detachment. Many escape strategies turn out not to be escape strategies. Observation is participation. Even not-observing is participation. 

Annnnyway, Katniss:

Katniss finds herself at the nexus of an epistemological and ontological crisis. Who is she? How does the system define her? She can't not participate. No neutral moves for her. A context she does not want is defining her. Her actions, and words, are repurposed by others, come to mean something new. What makes her such an interesting character is the messiness of her engagement with messy dystopic systems.

Superior to the mythic simplicity of the Twilight series in every way.

Katniss Everdeen by ~graysee on deviantART

There are no easy answers, fortunately. Yet the books offer wisdom in the form of functional processes. I mean to say: practical wisdom. Some rough words I would put to these, from The Hunger Games, are:

-          Watch out, someone’s playing you.

-          Don’t get cocky about WHO is playing you, and why. You might be wrong.

-          Even people who play the system are themselves played by the system.

-          Suspect and deconstruct your own actions, even as you engage with them.

-          Be prepared for frame-shifts, be ready to reinterpret your story-so-far based on new evidence.

-          Above all: suspect ideologies that define in-groups and out-groups.

-          Others are looking out for you. You’re blessed. Recognise this, it’s precious, at the heart of everything: acts of kindness, self-sacrifice for others.

-          At your best you’re looking out for others in the same way.

-          At your worst you’re complicit in systems that marginalise. Kindness between two individuals crosses all boundaries. Suspect the boundaries, embrace kindness.

I found the series surprising didactic, surprisingly direct with a surprisingly clear message, considering the utter ambiguity around Katniss’ navigation of systems. That is to say: the system is ambiguous, but the rules of engagement are straightforward, if painful: doubt, deconstruct, love.

Doubt, deconstruct, and love. We would do well to apply these lessons to schooling.

They feed into critical literacy. We’re not duped, but we don’t disconnect either. Or, we’re duped, but suspect that we’re duped, and look to minimise the harm. All this an antidote to hubris.

I think we need to be paranoid about getting duped. That's The Hunger Games: watch out, lest you become a pawn in someone else's game.

What to do, where to go from here?

I, for one, am explicitly and deliberately on the lookout for texts and mindsets that mesh Mode #1 and #2, and suggest this mode of engagement to others. Game based learning is one avenue: I play the game, but I am not the game. Texts like The Hunger Games are of great value at exploring what critical literacy looks like in action, in all its rawness.

For our own perception of school:

Meta-language is always helpful. Stand back, observe, analyse.

But afterwards, into the fray! There’s a system to reinvent, so let’s get cracking on it.

Beware the lessons of the French revolution (a sidetrack, a whole new post).

For our younglings:

We need to draw attention to the artificial nature of the school system, and teach kids to see beyond it. Gaming language provides an excellent way of doing this. 

I'd love to think that many young people are intuitively 'wised-up' and become at least somewhat systems-literate by virtue of computer games, and texts like The Hunger Games. I wouldn't want to leave it to chance. 

Teacher readers, I ask you as I ask myself: while we establish learning environments, do we also promote a second thread, a deconstruction process, to wise up our students to its arbitrary nature? They need Mode #1 as much as Mode #2. Do we teach them to flick between the two? They need Mode #2 as much as Mode #1 (we're not trying to breed smarmy Bachelor of Arts students here! Doers, not observers!)

Does this all sound too theoretical (I've did a B.A.)

What I mean is, when the teacher is in teacher mode, student in student mode, playing out their roles, locking horns, in the pressure-cooker classroom, dehumanised by a relic system of the industrial era, SNAP OUT OF IT. These are two human beings, who'd get along great in any other context. The snapping out happens via a shift into Mode #1 disinvestment. The shift can be as easy as a laugh. A moment of humour. But it can go much deeper than that. The de-fusion process can be embedded in business-as-usual.

Critical literacy for the win! 

(Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The Hunger Games & Critical Literacy, Post 3 of 4.

Part #3 – Game Thinking Promotes De-Fusion from the System

(Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 tomorrow)

I've defined critical literacy as the ability to both:

#1 observe, analyse, deconstruct a system (aka the observer’s perspective, from without), and

#2 engage with the system, complicitly but seeking agency.

My earnest interest in game-based learning is entirely to do with the perspective switching between Modes #1 and #2. When we engage in a game, we recognise the system as arbitrary, curated, as this way, yes, but it could be that way instead. The system is a technology, artificial, artifice. Mode #1. But, hey, let’s play along (Mode #2).

Modes #1 and #2 come together wonderfully in games. We are complicit in the system, yes, but deliberately so.

The dynamic is similar when we read fiction or watch films. The term is “suspension of disbelief”. I suspend my disbelief, laughing, crying, engaging. My heart is in it. I’m not the cynical observer. And yet, simultaneously, on some level, I am aware it is a fiction.

Schooling is a fiction. Systems are fictions.

This is necessarily so. Narratives approximate reality. That’s the whole point of them. They give us a lens to assist our sense-making. Mode #1 allows us to recognise narratives as narratives, separate the map from the landscape, opening up a myriad of new possibilities: rewriting, mashing up, switching, tinkering. Mode #2 allows us to wear them like clothing, participate in others’ fictions, contribute to culture, meaning, community.

When we employ game-based learning structures at my school, we mesh Modes #1 and #2. Students have a language for identifying the system as arbitrary, malleable, even while engaging deliberately (or resisting deliberately, knowingly). That the games are episodic only intensifies the benefits. Students learn to frame-shift, but also to describe their own frame-shifting.

Look at the language my colleague Chantelle Morrison uses in her planning for our Year 5/6 Science simulation unit:  “The disparity between academics will become evident in the simulation as students try to improve their employment.” And an outcome, “Students will: Experience the social hierarchy and imbalances of power of the various groups.” This simulation, of one term’s duration, involves explicit cues to the students that they are entering a parallel universe, a curated system. For 75 minutes a day, they don lab coats, take on the fictional roles of employees in the “Ministry of Science”, able to climb the greasy poll by earning DNA and Amoeba points, or gamble currency on Chance cards, all the while navigating a rigorously curated and sophisticated curriculum. The game structure is an external layer on top of core learning activities.

They’re learning Science as they go (complicit, Mode #2), but Chantelle has gone one better, using gaming to embed Mode #1 thought in the meta-language surrounding the experience. Debriefing with the students regarding the unit has been nothing short of fascinating. They have the words to deconstruct the context of their learning in a way that would be much more difficult if we started discussing ‘school’.

A game-design mindset can help teachers think in non-linear ways about learning pathways. When I play “Lord of the Rings Online” I can head in any direction through a curated landscape. With game thinking, Chantelle can map out a veritable learning landscape. Every child takes a different path. It’s all mapped to outcomes, the inspectors will be glad to see, but it is not linear.

Linear programming is dead, as is the piece of paper with a linear learning sequence plus some lip-service to the two ends of the fictional bell curve. A technology for three different groups? With game-based structures, Chantelle curated a learning landscape where 180 students completed 180 different programs, AND developed Mode#1 Mode#2 critical literacy at the same time. 

Some detailed (if rough notes) on design language around this sort of unit is here.

The possibilities when you align physical space, virtual space, learning culture and team teaching are endless. You can allow freedom on three axis: space, time, activity, without chaos. Harness initiative, cure endemic passivity. Systems design is an artform. Systems make us. We're often asked by visitors how students who can't self-direct cope with our learning structures. The question is in danger of presupposing that passive reliance on authority is inherent rather than trained/encouraged by teacher-centric pedagogy. 

In the modern factory era, hierarchical structures meant that schooling successfully spat out Mode #2 kids ready for Mode #2 jobs. Is that too harsh a generalisation?

I can read, write, rithmetic, and do what I’m told. I can haz job? You can haz! 

Yet businesses don’t want that anymore, they want better. They want Mode #1/Mode #2 employees; creative agents to turn a company from is to becoming. Perpetual re-invention, innovation. This is process AND content, becoming AND being.

No room for Platonic essentialism if you want to be around in 5 years. Working within the system, without expending effort in the alienation/reinvention process of Mode #1, means you stay the same. Kodak did that and it killed them. 

A game-design approach to schooling is a framework that can promotes complicity and critical agency at the same time: Modes #1 and #2. 

Part 4 - The Hunger Games, tomorrow.