Personal Experiences

Prior to Implementing Flipping:

I attempted to learn as much about the flipped classroom strategies and technology before implementing it. This consisted of attending professional development sessions on the topic, learning from teachers already implementing the flip, and following educators on blogs and Twitter.

Current Observations:

After implementing the flipped classroom, here are my observations to date:

1. Class time for assignments, activities, demos, labs, simulations, discussions, and engagement.

2. Besides being an effective teaching strategy, it is ideal for absent students to keep up.

3. Students can choose to watch lesson when they are more focused than during a set time in day.

4. Students review for assessments by reviewing videos as needed.

5. Increased student collaboration and discussion.

6. Less teacher time keeping students focused.

7. More teacher-student conversations which allows teacher to learn more about the student and where they are in their learning.

8. Teacher gains more control over interventions.

Starting to Flip? Consider:

1. Making videos takes time, consider trying to make most of the videos the year before implementing a full flipped classroom. When teaching a lesson 3-6 times in a day, the ideal time to video a lesson is right after that because you have the lesson rehearsed/prepared.

2. Make lessons concise and keep them an appropriate length.

3. Where are you going to store videos? Youtube, Vimeo, Teachertube, Schooltube, Google Drive are all options to consider. Your school filters and making videos interactive system will play a role in this decision.

4. How are you going to monitor completion of flipped lessons? Systems such as Playposit are very helpful with this. Also, how are you going to deal with non-completion of flipped lessons?

5. What are you going to do in the reclaimed class time? Probably the most important thing to consider is how are you going to increase/individualize learning during the class time? Planning of this requires more time than making videos and is why it is important to have most of videos completed before implementing flipped classroom. Class time should not be wasted, routine, non-engaging or just about completing homework/problems. It needs to include proven instructional activities, formative assessment to monitor mastery learning, and individualized interventions.