Tim Stahmer wrote about the flipped classroom, suggesting that while it was an interesting concept, it probably wasn’t revolutionary.  I would agree: it is based on the idea that technology allows us to time shift the lecture but it doesn’t do away with the lecture.

But I’ve been working with a group of teachers who are attempting to implement the idea and they see a few pluses as well as one big challenge.

The biggest plus for the teachers who were experiencing success was, as comments to Tim’s post suggests, the quality time they are able to spend with students during class.  They were able to quickly view student data that arose from their out-of-class work and group them in class to help them differentiate instruction.  And, they can have students work on projects during class time rather than making them “extras” to be done on students’ own time.

Another area where they felt the flipped classroom was helping kids was in was letting students grapple with new concepts on their own. They were forced to take responsibility for their own learning, gauging how well they learned and generating questions about the material.

The biggest challenge they face is getting kids to participate. To make it work, the kids have to be willing to do the work prior to coming to class.  If they don’t watch the video or read the article or whatever else is asked of them for preparation, then they aren’t ready for the concept engagement activities in class.  They are finding themselves having to “train” the students in this new methodology as they make it part of the routine but one of the teachers despaired as his students simply didn’t do homework, no matter how engaging or student centered.

I don’t think we can ever really experience revolution until the high stakes standardized testing environment changes…until then, any pedagogical approach that gives teachers more opportunity to spend quality time with students is probably a good one.