4 Things to Know About the Flipped Classroom

Previously, there wasn’t time for that kind of activity. For Nesloney, flipping his classroom was a way to keep students engaged and to promote a higher level of thinking. He wasn’t simply “teaching to the test” anymore.

Students do not have to learn through video. Homework can just as easily be to read a text. Many first time flippers get so caught up in the idea of videos that they forget the media is secondary. It’s also important to remember that flipped learning is not an all or nothing thing and some concepts are better taught face-to-face. You do not have to flip every lesson.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that all content needs to be taught through video,” says Brain Bennett, a former chemistry teacher turned TechSmith employee. He’s now a customer solutions engineer for the education team there.

“You need to be extremely critical of they types of videos you make,” says Bennett. For example, he wouldn’t recommend using a video to explain the atom. “It’s very conceptual. It’s hard to draw,” he says. In this case, a traditional in-person classroom lecture may be best.

The bottom line: a successful flipped classroom has nothing to do with videos and everything to do with how you approach teaching and learning in the classroom.

Technology is For Creation and Collaboration

Using technology for technology’s sake doesn’t help anyone. There has to be a purpose behind it. Technology serves two purposes in a flipped classroom. One, is to extend the classroom beyond school walls. That’s what video and online learning platforms allow you to do. Once content is posted online, students can access it anytime, anywhere. The second purpose technology serves is where the “flip” in flipped classroom comes in.

In flipped learning, teachers do not drive the content, the students do. “That’s where we get into what was really the buzz at InfoComm this year, which was collaboration and collaborative tools within the classroom,” says Todd Johnson, Integrated Systems specialist at Alpha Video.

You Might Like: The Mobile Learning Debate: BYOD vs. 1:1

The technology is really what allows for that collaboration factor in the classroom. Students may use a mobile device, an interactive whiteboard or even an app to interact with lessons (or each other) and create projects and documents related to what they are learning. These tools allow students to take ownership of their education. For example, in Nesloney’s classroom students used tablets to make their own videos, research and create instructional materials. Posting a video online may extend the classroom, but it doesn’t necessarily flip it.

The First Year is the Hardest

Any teacher who practices flipped learning will tell you the first year is the hardest. If you choose to use videos, this will be the first time you have attempted to create and distribute them to your students. You will also likely need time to adjust to how different the in-class environment becomes when you are no longer “the sage on the stage.”

Bennett remembers learning an important lesson that first year he began flipping. “I had to give up the feeling that I needed to direct every part of the classroom,” he says. The active learning that goes on in a flipped classroom can be more chaotic than teachers are used to when everyone is talking and working together, much like they would in an office.

“We talk about college and career readiness, but nothing about school models that,” he says. “It became a micro culture of working like adults in my classroom.”

Students had assignments, but it didn’t matter where or when they worked on them as long as they met deadline. Once Bennett figured out he didn’t need to control every aspect of his classroom, the learning environment transformed into something closer to what students would experience in the working world.