Podcasts and Flipping Classrooms

I’ve been hearing about the “flipped classroom” for at least 5 years now, but never really thought about trying it with my classes. I’ve used videos to help illustrate concepts and demonstrate technologies, but I haven’t tried recording any of my own lectures for students to use. Students liked the videos and seemed to catch the information well. As an effort to accommodate auditory learners, I did take my written chapters and used text-to-speech technologies to generate audio recordings of the materials for students to listen to instead of depending only on printed materials. Some students liked this approach and some used a combination of listening to the chapters and reading along with the audio. However, most students used the traditional print. After reading chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 of the text book, I have started seriously thinking about flipping certain sections of my class (King and Cox, 2011, pp33-88, 105-120). The first section is lecture and usually doesn’t go well. I’ve found myself thinking of it as the rough part to get through. I’m now thinking some videos of me explaining the primary concepts will go a long way with the reading to make this part easier. Then we can spend the time in class only covering the parts that are difficult for the students and move on to the hands-on section of the course. Principal Gregg Green (PBS, 2013) flipped the entire Clintondale High School in an effort to improve learning for the students. The process has shown benefits as the numbers of the measurements of success have increased. The GPA for one student, Daryl Wallace Jr., went from a 2.5 as a freshman to a 3.5 as a senior. Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_p63W_2F_4 One caution given by Harvard’s Justin Wrike (PBS, 2013) is that simply flipping may not be enough. Taking a bad lecture and uninteresting worksheets and switching them around will probably not produce great results. I was glad to see King and Cox (2011, p59) remind us to make sure the technologies we use are accessible to everybody, including students with disabilities. References King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The professor’s guide to taming technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. PBS News Hour, (2013). What a Flipped Classroom Looks Like. December 11, 2013, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_p63W_2F_4