Who doesn't love sitting down for an hour and listening to a teacher spout off facts as you furiously try to keep up in your notes? I would be willing to guess that this is not many people's favorite thing to do. From personal experience, I know how frustrating it can be to try and listen to a teacher's lecture while still writing the thing they said two sentences ago. Even through my teachers have generally been good about asking for questions in class, I often have found myself still trying to absorb the information or scribble down those last few words when the time for questions expires.
What would happen if students could come to class having already witnessed the lecture for the day and ready with questions? This is the premise of a flipped classroom. I think that it would be rewarding to apply this principle to the high school physics classroom. For classes such as physics that are more difficult for some students than for others, having the lecture prerecorded and in video format allows students to pause or go back in the video to absorb and understand the concepts fully. After having time to absorb the information outside of class, students can then bring the questions they took away from the lecture to the classroom. During the in-class time, students can then ask questions, work on assigned problems ("book work" instead of "homework"), and have more time for laboratory experiments, projects, and collaboration in learning and practicing the concepts.
Oh thank heavens for the technology that allows for ideas such as flipped classrooms to become a reality!
This approach is not only gaining more and more traction but is also seeing an increase in A) student engagement and B) test scores. Teachers tell me time and time again that what this approach really does is allow the teacher to have more one-on-one time with each student....which is where A & B come in. It's not about the technology....it's about what the technology allows us to do!
ReplyDelete