Flipping Out

I mentioned flipping in my last blog post, thinking I had found this incredible new idea for ed tech to share with my grad school compatriots. The basic idea: instead of sitting through lecture in class and doing work at home, students watch the lecture at home and come to class to do hands-on work with the teacher. I even found a guy explaining the differences between flipped and traditional classrooms:

All of this in my free time, until I checked the readings for my next Ed Tech class and realized that, serendipitously, I had already completed most of them. In fact, this awesome, emphatic dude in the video above, Jon Thomas-Palmer, someone I began to admire and envy for his creativity, energy, and enthusiasm for his content, came to speak to our class about flipping last week. I was a little starstruck; that doesn't happen often for me, someone who, in his teenage years, worked with Los Angeles VIPs at a concert venue. (Read: I escorted celebrities like Paris Hilton and Larry David [sadly not together] to their seats.)

Let's make this clear: I was giddy (flipping out, you could say) about meeting a kickass educator. Looks like I made the right career decision.

After watching Jon in his element and seeing how he creates these awesome videos (it takes A LOT of time), it was difficult for me to envision how I could flip a social studies classroom. Physics seems like a subject that requires lots of lecture, with a teacher modeling how to work through various types of problems on the board, and then breaking up the lectures with labs. In his flipped class, students came into class with the basic knowledge on how to work through the types of problems for that day and could immediately start to practice with the teacher's guidance. He front-loads the "I do" and begins class with the "We do."

The most common question for Jon was, "How do you know if a student hasn't watched the lecture?" Jon simply replied, "You'll know." My peers pushed back, "Yes, but how can you ensure that all students watch the videos?" He said, "You can't. Can you ensure all students do homework? No." But during his presentation, I began to interpret "flipping" as something far more general than watching Youtube videos at home. It's more that teachers expect students to come in to class with base knowledge. It's more than incorporating tech into the classroom: it's flipping teacher expectations. Instead of expecting students to listen, take diligent notes, etc., you are expecting them to take responsibility for their learning outside of class and be ready to be active during class.

While I'm still unsure how this would look in my classroom, I'm going to let my ideas marinate. It's not something to just try; flipping requires teachers to be more creative with class time. Otherwise, I may end up looking like this guy.