Quite a few teachers at my school tried this last year. It worked/is working well with the honors and AP kids, but bombed big time with the regular/lower level kids for all of the reason that I'm sure you know/can assume. I really love this approach but since I teach the lower level kids and I can barely even get them to fully pay attention to the labs and "fun" stuff we do at school now, I haven't attempted it yet. If I'm still teaching next year I've thought about giving it a shot but think it will definitely need to be implemented at the beginning of the year and creatively. What have been your experiences?
very interesting... like LeAnna said I can see it working well for self-motivated individuals. from my experience, a mixture of individual and collaborative work is critical. what are your thoughts Keith?
just one issue I see is concept comprehension. I suspect comprehension will decrease. watching a video is just not as engaging as watching a live human. plus there's no way to guage the audience reception and make adjustments.
it is so cool that everyone is writing. what we are putting together in the comments is exactly why the flipped classroom is so enticing, it offers a different approach, another way to 'teach'. i think that, as always, the more ways that you can implement education the better off your students are; however, one of the issues with the flipped classroom, along with motivation as leanna points out, goes back to the issue of the tech. divide. even in a school as affluent as the one that i work in there are students that don't have access to a computer on a regular basis. that being said, this is the direction our admin. would like to move in, but i think that older teachers are afraid of the change, afraid to loose their authority over the knowledge. it is such an amazing idea though, and i do use so many videos and document and out or class teaching moments, but if the students don't do them, then i find that i still have to teach the concepts in class or else the whole classroom activity is hogwash. it still comes down to what the students are interested in, and how important education is to them/their parents. so much fun. keith, are you advising this kind of teaching methodology when you are working with teachers?
I started using something like this the last 2 years I was teaching because my kids did't do homework, so I just quit giving "traditional homework" and did it in class as either an intro or exit to whatever the learning activity was. HOWEVER, I differentiated my kids by who came to class prepared (IE- they had watched or read or done the "prep assignment) and those who had not. Those who were prepared did the learning activity, those who were not prepared did not, but instead did the prep work in class. If they had time, they got to join in the learning activity or they could do the activity with another class during their study hall if they had one, or even during a lunch period set aside for that purpose. I don't know if that would motivate high school kids, LeAnna, but it worked with a percentage of the 7th graders. In reality, I think it benefited most the kids who are always held back by the kids who don't do what they are supposed to do. Adam, I think you are on the money-but the issue of concept comprehension is impacted by MANY other things that have changed since you were in school. As always, it is not the "silver bullet" but it is one of the better ways to implement technology. Ian is right about the access - as we all know, it has to be not just available, but easy. Technology that doesn't work is an absolute turnoff. My kids did LOVE having a pass to the media center to do work on the computers during study hall.
Keith - thanks for providing such a thought provoking blog :-) A side benefit was getting to do more of the fun learning stuff after several years of slowly cutting them out of my plans because I could not make time for them.
7 comments:
Quite a few teachers at my school tried this last year. It worked/is working well with the honors and AP kids, but bombed big time with the regular/lower level kids for all of the reason that I'm sure you know/can assume. I really love this approach but since I teach the lower level kids and I can barely even get them to fully pay attention to the labs and "fun" stuff we do at school now, I haven't attempted it yet. If I'm still teaching next year I've thought about giving it a shot but think it will definitely need to be implemented at the beginning of the year and creatively. What have been your experiences?
very interesting... like LeAnna said I can see it working well for self-motivated individuals. from my experience, a mixture of individual and collaborative work is critical. what are your thoughts Keith?
just one issue I see is concept comprehension. I suspect comprehension will decrease. watching a video is just not as engaging as watching a live human. plus there's no way to guage the audience reception and make adjustments.
it is so cool that everyone is writing. what we are putting together in the comments is exactly why the flipped classroom is so enticing, it offers a different approach, another way to 'teach'. i think that, as always, the more ways that you can implement education the better off your students are; however, one of the issues with the flipped classroom, along with motivation as leanna points out, goes back to the issue of the tech. divide. even in a school as affluent as the one that i work in there are students that don't have access to a computer on a regular basis. that being said, this is the direction our admin. would like to move in, but i think that older teachers are afraid of the change, afraid to loose their authority over the knowledge. it is such an amazing idea though, and i do use so many videos and document and out or class teaching moments, but if the students don't do them, then i find that i still have to teach the concepts in class or else the whole classroom activity is hogwash. it still comes down to what the students are interested in, and how important education is to them/their parents. so much fun. keith, are you advising this kind of teaching methodology when you are working with teachers?
I started using something like this the last 2 years I was teaching because my kids did't do homework, so I just quit giving "traditional homework" and did it in class as either an intro or exit to whatever the learning activity was. HOWEVER, I differentiated my kids by who came to class prepared (IE- they had watched or read or done the "prep assignment) and those who had not. Those who were prepared did the learning activity, those who were not prepared did not, but instead did the prep work in class. If they had time, they got to join in the learning activity or they could do the activity with another class during their study hall if they had one, or even during a lunch period set aside for that purpose. I don't know if that would motivate high school kids, LeAnna, but it worked with a percentage of the 7th graders. In reality, I think it benefited most the kids who are always held back by the kids who don't do what they are supposed to do.
Adam, I think you are on the money-but the issue of concept comprehension is impacted by MANY other things that have changed since you were in school.
As always, it is not the "silver bullet" but it is one of the better ways to implement technology. Ian is right about the access - as we all know, it has to be not just available, but easy. Technology that doesn't work is an absolute turnoff. My kids did LOVE having a pass to the media center to do work on the computers during study hall.
Keith - thanks for providing such a thought provoking blog :-) A side benefit was getting to do more of the fun learning stuff after several years of slowly cutting them out of my plans because I could not make time for them.
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