{"id":968,"date":"2011-03-29T06:40:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T10:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=968"},"modified":"2011-03-29T06:40:34","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T10:40:34","slug":"the-flipped-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=968","title":{"rendered":"The flipped classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in November, I wrote in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=524\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a> about the use of technology in elementary schools &#8211; or the lack of use &#8211; and this video, while about high school, has got me thinking again about technology and its effective use in (and out of) school.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Flipped Classroom\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2H4RkudFzlc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The teachers profiled develop instructional videos using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techsmith.com\/camtasia\/\" target=\"_blank\">Camtasia<\/a>, &#8211; here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Learning4Mastery#p\/c\/2D7021F2387CC6D4\/0\/-BOrA9K2vmY\" target=\"_blank\">an example<\/a> of their work &#8211; and students watch these during the evening, asynchronously, when  they might normally do their homework. Students then come to class to, in  short, do their homework &#8211; apply what they learned after watching their lesson the previous evening &#8211; flipping that homework\/classroom work paradigm. One of the teachers, Aaron Sams, moves around the classroom and coaches and guides and puts out fires, as he says: &#8220;I&#8217;m no longer the guy who stands up in front of the classroom and yacks at a student for an hour.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It reminded me of what former colleagues at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.learningpt.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Learning Point Associates<\/a> wrote about in this piece, called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.learningpt.org\/expertise\/educatorquality\/resources\/publications\/InnovationsInStaffing.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Toward the Structural Transformation of School: Innovations in Staffing<\/a>. While more radical, it&#8217;s along the same continuum as the flipped classroom, calling for education to become \u201cunbundled,&#8221; &#8220;no longer wrapped in a neat brick-and-mortar school package.&#8221; They go on to write that in &#8220;a system of unbundled education, the teacher moves away from being the disseminator of information and toward being a facilitator of learning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some folks view the effective teacher as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w8fu-hq3S7A\" target=\"_blank\">Robin Williams character from <em>Dead Poets Society<\/em><\/a>, and while there&#8217;s something to be said for the inspirational teacher that stands up on a desk and declaims &#8211; yes, been there, done that, early in my teaching career &#8211; there&#8217;s more to be said for the teacher that walks quietly around the room and shares his or her expertise with students that are at work &#8211; as we see in the flipped classroom. In fact, good listening and observational skills are probably the most important qualities of an effective teacher &#8211; as well as the willingness to let go. It certainly is not declaiming.<\/p>\n<p>Back to the flipped\/unbundled continuum. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Education Week<\/a> put out its annual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/toc\/2011\/03\/17\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Technology Counts<\/a> issue, this one called <em>K-12 Seeks Custom Fit: Schools Test Individualized Digital Learning<\/em>. In it is a story on <a href=\"http:\/\/schools.nyc.gov\/community\/innovation\/izone\/default.htm\" target=\"_blank\">NYC&#8217;s Innovation Zone or iZone<\/a>, a three-year initiative to test new ways for educating students, with a heavy emphasis on using digital tools to customize learning. There were other pieces on, again from New York City, its <a href=\"http:\/\/schools.nyc.gov\/NR\/rdonlyres\/9435AD08-90F3-42AA-838C-6372C3B5D2E6\/0\/SchoolofOneBrochure_FINAL.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">School of One<\/a> and one on students customizing their own learning experiences, which began with an example from a social studies class at Philly&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scienceleadership.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Science Leadership Academy<\/a>. But fear not: This customization does not devolve into chaos. I like how this last piece finished, stating that just &#8217;cause &#8220;students may be skilled at using technology to personalize their own education, it doesn&#8217;t mean teachers should take a hands-off approach. In fact, students say they appreciate having a teacher&#8221; &#8211; here&#8217;s that word again &#8211; &#8220;guide them even more in how best to implement the technology, how to find trusted online sources of information, and how to organize and present that information.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, it&#8217;s not about technology. It&#8217;s about using effective and easily accessible tools to make learning relevant and interesting for students. All schools and school districts need to be encouraging the kind of experimentation that&#8217;s happening in that flipped classroom, in New York&#8217;s iZone, at the Science Leadership Academy. Principals and school district leaders need to give those experimenters some funding (Camtasia costs $300), their trust, and the time and space needed for thoughtful experimentation &#8211; just like Aaron Sams, his colleague Jonathan Bergman, and other like-minded teachers are doing for their kids.<\/p>\n<p>More on the flipped classroom at this <a href=\"http:\/\/mast.unco.edu\/programs\/vodcasting\/\" target=\"_blank\">University of Northern Colorado site<\/a>.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in November, I wrote in this post about the use of technology in elementary schools &#8211; or the lack of use &#8211; and this video, while about high school, has got me thinking again about technology and its effective &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=968\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,7,71,72],"tags":[221,225,222,228,227,51,226,229,230,129,224,231],"class_list":["post-968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom","category-school","category-school-district","category-teachers","category-teaching-2","tag-camtasia","tag-dead-poets-society","tag-flipped-classroom","tag-innovation-zone","tag-izone","tag-learning-point-associates","tag-robin-williams","tag-school-of-one","tag-science-leadership-academy","tag-technology","tag-unbundled-education","tag-university-of-northern-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}