Flipping Your Classroom

Classroom Flipping is a hot topic these days, and it is a really cool concept. The idea is this, instead of teaching a lesson at school, and sending kids home to practice by doing homework exercises, you do the opposite. You send the kids home to watch a lesson (usually a video, screen recording or tutorial) and then the kids come to class to do the practice exercises. This completely changes the way a classroom looks. Instead of seeing teachers in front of the classroom lecturing, you see teachers walking around and helping students on a more individualized basis.

Teachers can create lessons for students in may ways. Here in Frisco, we have screen capture software that will record your voice and actions. Interwrite does that for us (there is an earlier blog post on this, or your facilitator can help you with that. Mobi is not required to use the Interwrite software. Even PowerPoint lets you record narration to go with your slides. There are also lots of lessons already out on the Internet somewhere. Khan Academy has a ton of great math lesson for example. Links to videos or lessons can bye easily put in Moodle or your classroom web site. Lessons can also be embedded in these vehicles for easy student access.

You could have your students go out and view a lesson on a specific concept, and have them take notes at home. When the students get to class, you could check their notes to ensure they met their responsibility. Then, you could extend the lesson by having them answer questions or work on a project during class time.

Parents like this idea too. For one thing, you are taking parents "off the hook" because they don't feel the need to understand all the concepts their kids are learning in school in order to help them with their homework. In fact, parents can watch the videos or tutorials or lessons with their kids, so they can learn also, without the pressure of helping with application.

Another benefit to this teaching style is that kids can re-watch any lesson at any time. If they struggled with a concept, they can go back and watch again and again. Kids that are absent? No problem! All their lessons are online. In addition, this kind of teaching allows you to really differentiate your instruction. That seems a little strange to say since all kids have the same video to watch. But since class time is now spent helping individual students with their problems, it is easy to remediate and give students that one-on-one time that they are sop desperately needing,

Want more info on how this works? Check out this article or search for "The Flipped Classroom" on Google. You won't believe how much information you will find!

http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/how-the-flipped-classroom-is-radically-transforming-learning-536.php


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