Flipped Classrooms - Education Technology
I have recently learned of an idea called a "flipped classroom". The idea is that the work that used to be done at school is done at home and the work that used to be done at home is done at school.
Here's a description from onlinecollege.org:
The key to good educational uses of technology remains the same: the teacher delegates to the technology the tasks that do not require the teacher's personal and professional attention. The teacher retains those personal and professional tasks that require creativity, improvisation, and customization - the parts that are founded on knowing each student and what that student needs to be motivated and to progress.
What is the highest and best use of the teacher's time and class time and how can we leverage technology to allow the teacher to do more of that in class?
Here's a description from onlinecollege.org:
In a flipped classroom, students watch lectures and supplemental materials for their classes at home, usually pre-recorded by their instructors and uploaded to the web. Classroom time is then used for answering student questions, helping with homework, and other activities that help students apply what they've learned.Once again, the idea here is to use the technology for what it does well to free the teacher to do what the teacher does well. In some examples the technology provides the individualized instruction. In this example the teacher provides the individualized instruction.
The key to good educational uses of technology remains the same: the teacher delegates to the technology the tasks that do not require the teacher's personal and professional attention. The teacher retains those personal and professional tasks that require creativity, improvisation, and customization - the parts that are founded on knowing each student and what that student needs to be motivated and to progress.
What is the highest and best use of the teacher's time and class time and how can we leverage technology to allow the teacher to do more of that in class?
Comments
This technique works with students who are motivated and have parents supportive of education, but likely does not work with kids that are struggling.
What might fix that is to have before and after school hours equipment for watching the lectures and going through the material (as well as free food perhaps). But I think you'd have to think long and hard about how to make this work for kids that can't or won't do this work at home and make that solution a major part of the structure of the program.
It certainly has promise but as Jon points out, how to get this to work with the lesson watched outside the classroom.
FedMomof2
A halfway measure could be that an aid or TFA teacher shows a group of several classes the movie for the first 30 or 40 minutes and then the teachers answer questions and work with the kids on homework 1-on-1 or in small groups.
However, I was a very motivated college-aged student, and there were many, many kids who did not pass that class, simply due to not keeping up with the videos.
Like everyone else, I do not see how this could be effectively delivered in a K-12 classroom, at least not for core material. This might work for electives or for extra, in-depth material for motivated students. But there simply is no substitute for a teacher leading a classroom when you are talking about K-12. They are still kids, after all, and have varying degrees of self-sufficiency, motivation, and parent support.
Helen Schinske
AdvancePath Academics
My concern as I read this is that these "academies" within a school will essentially be a "self-contained" classroom for struggling students, hooked up to headphones. Students attend one of three sessions a day - morning, afternoon, evenings. There are four teachers and one aide for 120 students. AdvancePath says it works to have subject matter experts in reading, math, science and social studies, as well as at least one trained to work with ELL. Oh and a diverse mix of racial representation and male and femaile teachers. No Problem!