In my article, Teaching Students to Talk, I addressed the need for teachers to teach students how to effectively talk to each other through the intentional use of partners and small groups incorporated into classroom practices to get students talking to the teacher and each other. In this article, I would like to focus on the another often misused part of classroom instruction, the use of visual tools and technology.

We all know that our students use technology through text messaging to communicate directly to each other and social media to communicate to their peer groups but is this the definition of effective communication in an educational environment? Most will agree that the answer is, “probably not” and while the cell phone itself can be an effective communication tool without texting or social media, there are also other effective tools at our disposal for communication between teacher and student as well as student to student.

Our classrooms are often equipped with projectors, computers and software to take advantage of them. We also have often have efficient wifi that can connect students’ devices and available computers or Chromebook carts to the internet. Properly incorporating the use of these in our lessons can greatly enhance the way our students communicate with us and each other while at the same time adding the side benefit of better engagement.

I have coined the term “mini-flip” to represent any classroom technique that requires students to use available technology resources (or any other resource for that matter) to find out for themselves information that the teacher would have normally communicated in the form of notes and discussion, before the teacher actually gives he information to the students. The student (or group of students) is presented with a general question or topic and asked to use a device to look up answers or information.

The research can then be incorporated into partner or group discussion as a way of sharing information obtained followed by a class discussion with the teacher acting as facilitator to keep discussion on track and make sure all relevant and important information is covered. The research can even become a class presentation that student groups do using the smart projector or other visuals such as poster board or butcher paper to present to the rest of the class. Sometimes a “mini-flip” can even be as simple as responding to a student’s question by asking them to look up the answer and talk about what they find.

Teachers who use this technique often express that the topic is covered even more thoroughly than it would have been if the teacher had dictated the information to students and the engagement level of students is much higher. The use of a “mini-flip” with or without technology to engage students in classroom research can be an effective way to teach and incorporate better student to student and student to teacher communications.