First and foremost, I apologize for the late post!
Now Flipped Classrooms: is the practice of changing the order of the elements a project or lesson is rearranged in order to promote students' free thinking and critical analysis. The website educause.edu states that the term Flipped Classroom is a broad term used to any type of lesson or classroom that provides a pre-recorded lecture and time for in-class exercises. What stood out most to me was how similar this structure resembles how we are taught at the college level; in fact most of the honors/AP classes in high school had a structure similar to what was described in the article.
Educause.edu goes on to say that the downsides of such a structure is that it can be done wrong easily! Teachers must have adequate amount of time to produce enthralling and educated videos that engage the students in order to keep them focused on the subjects being taught. Because of new technologies and standards that are asked of teachers, some may have to learn new skills in order to produce a lesson under this structure. Another downside could arise by students being unable to access materials outside of classrooms (Like poor internet connections or not having access to computers); students may also find it hard focusing on lectures outside of the classroom, especially while using an Internet enabled device. Because attention is hard to monitor on computer-based lectures teachers will have to work towards keeping their students' entertained and educated to compete with the Internet's distractions.
Depending on the subject and concepts that are being taught, I think a flipped classroom method can be an extremely beneficial and useful tool. That being said, I believe that using this tool should be something considered on a case by case scenario. Some classrooms, and some students may need the attention and the pace that a traditional type of lecture offers compared to that of a flipped classroom structure. Personally, I would embrace the flipped classroom style of lecturing on subjects that fit such a methods, if and only if I knew that all students would/could benefit from such a method of teaching.
I didn't even think about how easily it can be done wrong! But you are SO right. Making videos really requires a type of personality to make them enthralling and educating. If you're a monotonous speaker over a video? And your students have to watch that? Haha, the only difference is you can't catch them sleeping!
ReplyDeleteI agree that in certain situations, it could be useful, but I can't see teaching that subject every day in a flipped learning method. It would have to be a subject that has a lot of possibility for interacting and a high probability that students will want to watch the video (assuming you don't put them to sleep...).
I completely agree how to feel about how flipped classrooms are used a lot today throughout college and even in high school. I didn't even think about the issue of how time consuming and how creative the teachers would have to be in order to make this method work. It is important to make these assignments and tasks fun for the students or else they will not be able to stay focused and they will get bored. I know for me personally when I had to work on things outside of class, a lot of the time I wasn't motivated at all. The assignments were very dry or boring and it didn't motivate me to complete them. I do agree that the flipped classroom model can we very successful for certain things but not for all. There are a lot of things you have to consider though before you choose this method.
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