C4T #1

Science Teaching for the Future
Sunday, September 11, 2011 - The Nuts and Bolts of Flipping

Amanda Ooten has been teaching at the high school level for three years. Her recent project has been to "flip" her classroom. Flipping a classroom basically means flipping what happens in the classroom with what happens at home. Instead of listening to a lecture in class, the student watches the lecture online at home and at their own pace. The class time is spent doing activities and solving problems together. In my first comment, I told her how much I love the idea of this program. I acknowledged my concern with the responsibility of the students. I hope to hear back from her.
Sunday, October 23, 2011 - My Flipped Classroom, Part 2
Amanda has recently blogged about the progress of her flip and about what has and hasn't worked. Unfortunately, she has reported that flipping a classroom 100% takes more time that she planned. So far, she is flipping her classroom slowly and wants to have it at least 50% flip by next year. The reason it takes so long is because there is a level of responsibility expected of the students regarding them actually watching the lectures before class and reading their assigned chapters. She reports spending most of the class time catching up students who didn't do their homework. There are always going to be bugs in new programs, but they can be worked out with patience.