This chapter, authored by a 17-year veteran teacher, approaches flipped instruction using empirical evidence from experience and observation within the classroom. Included are perspectives from the author's students on flipped instruction, as well as advice on pragmatic issues, such as where to first start with flipping instruction and how to manage outside-of-school access issues for students. It explores the impact on both classroom instruction and student assessment. Suggestions are offered on how to approach traditional instructional tasks with the flipped method in mind. This chapter concludes with a flip-related glossary of technology terms and tools. Educational practitioners can extrapolate from this “in the trenches” perspective to inform and enhance their own circumstances with regard to flipped learning.
TopPedagogical Considerations
What have I learned in my quest for pedagogical excellence? Many things, not the least of which is that technology is the catalyst for change in how we educate the next generation. Socratic seminars, literature circles, and class discussion are all important, and they still have a role in my classroom and in flipped classrooms. However, it is through the use of technology that my classroom transforms into something different than the classrooms of previous years or prior generations.
Figure 1.
Technology will not replace teachers
TopWhat Is Flipped Instruction?
Once upon a time, a professor at Cedarville University began having students watch the PowerPoint before class, naming his approach the “Classroom Flip,” while around the same time, a group of university instructors at Miami University in Ohio launched a similar format they called the “inverted classroom” format (Moran & Young, 2013, p. 4). In both cases, the essential idea was that the doling out of information now happens asynchronously outside of class, and analysis, discussion, and other hands-on work with the information happens in class. Although there have been many modifications, improvements, and new technologies since the “PowerPoint starting point,” this “sage on the stage” becoming the “guide on the side” shift (King, 1993) as a means of differentiated and improved instruction is at the heart of my practices, as well. Homework is more relevant. Class time is more powerful. Engagement is enhanced. It both figuratively and quite literally inverts the classroom dynamic.