Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to flip the classroom and create avid learners

The traditional sequence of teaching using lectures, discussion, projects, and testing was upended during the pandemic as teachers adapted to digital classrooms and students took on more responsibility for their learning.

Now that students are back in school, many teachers are finding that continuing to use a blend of digital and face-to-face classroom learning methods can be effective in boosting student engagement and fostering constructive discussions.

The flipped classroom is one pedagogy that has been especially fruitful by reversing the traditional lecture and homework components of a class. In many traditional classrooms, the majority of class time is spent in a lecture-and-listen format. The flipped classroom replaces this static model by engaging students in active, dynamic learning. …Read More

How film and a flipped classroom lead to student success

According to research, in a typical classroom lecture students will generally retain only five percent of the material presented. Today’s teachers are looking to new methods of teaching and learning to improve student engagement and achievement, including tech-based solutions like the flipped classroom.

Designed to create an environment for students to actively participate and engage with the material provided, the flipped classroom is shown to exhibit learning gains almost two standard deviations higher than those found in traditional classes.

Related content: 8 principles to help you advance to flipped learning 3.0…Read More

10 things I learned flipping my classroom

In the spring of 2013, after attending several conferences and beginning research for my dissertation, I set out to flip some of the aspects of my classroom. The term “flipping your classroom,” coined by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams more than a decade ago, has become a flexible term used to describe a number of different teaching techniques for turning instruction on its head. After five years, three grade levels, hundreds of students, and a lot of trial and error, here are 10 takeaways from my experiences flipping my classroom.

1. The title is misleading
The concept of flipping the classroom originally referred to the time and place of homework versus direct instruction. Rather than watch a lecture in class and complete homework at home, students would watch a video lecture at home and do the “homework” in class. While that might be interesting for a while, it does not really change much. Students are still learning via direct instruction, still having to work outside of school on their own time, and still receiving virtually the same pedagogy. To me, and many others, flipping is more about flipping the focus of the classroom from the teacher to the student. Once that has become your primary objective, everything else can follow.

2. Question everything
Schools hold many things sacrosanct—whether they’re mandated by districts or just a part of the student-and-teacher expectation. When I committed to flipping, I realized that it would only work if I were prepared to question everything. Things like late policies (“If it’s not in by Tuesday, it’s a zero”) and homework, and even traditional planning, all had to be brought into question. Students needed the flexibility to redo assignments if needed, turn in work a day or two late if life got in the way, and even have the option to work ahead or design their own projects.…Read More

Who are the educators driving flipped learning?

Educators searching for flipped learning inspiration can now find it in a list of 100 people who are innovating and inspiring others in their pursuit of flipped instruction.

The Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI), a worldwide coalition of educators, researchers, technologists, professional development providers and education leaders, published the FLGI 100, an annual list identifying the top 100 innovative people in education who are driving the adoption of the flipped classroom around the world.

The list is compiled by the FLGI executive committee, led by Jon Bergmann, one of the leaders of the flipped classroom movement. The FLGI 100 list includes flipped learning researchers, master teachers, technology coaches, literacy specialists, math and science experts and educators from kindergarten to higher education.…Read More

What does a flipped classroom look like at each grade level?

Although the term “flipped learning” is almost universally recognized, teachers apply it in many forms, in all grades levels, and in various school environments. If you are a teacher using flipped learning, the chances are that you share some similarities with other teachers who flip—as well as some differences. However, the major commonality among all flipped learning teachers is that every one of them is creating personal learning experiences for each student.

We asked three flipped teachers — one from an elementary school, one from a junior high, and one from a high school — to describe what learning looks like in their world.

Beth Hobbs, third-grade teacher
Burkett Elementary, Pennsylvania
…Read More

3 ways the flipped classroom leads to better subject mastery

Now that the buzz about flipped learning is calming and the novelty is wearing off, the time has come to dig a little deeper into the natural outcomes of flipping. Specifically, flipping can change the type of work students complete and the way in which class time will be used; it can modify the nature of assessment, and it can alter the way in which teachers will report student work.

First and foremost, we should define some terms. On the most basic level, flipped learning occurs when instructors make use of video lectures outside the class in order to bring what was being done in the homework space back into the classroom. In short: lecture at home, homework in class.

Much of the conversation about flipping has focused on using teacher-created video as an instructional tool, but the real benefit of flipping the classroom does not come from video. The true benefit comes from using videos as a teaching tool to deliver direct instruction at home so teachers are free to reinvent classroom time.…Read More

This new tool makes the flipped classroom more social

Flipping your class by having students watch lecture videos for their homework can lead to richer discussions about the content, but only if students come to class prepared. And having them watch a video lecture at home “simply takes a technique that didn’t work in person and puts in online,” said Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur.

During the 2016 Building Learning Communities (BLC) conference organized by education thought leader Alan November, Mazur unveiled a free tool that he and a team of colleagues developed to solve this problem.

Called Perusall, it’s a social learning platform that will “essentially make sure every student is prepared for class,” Mazur said. It also makes sure teachers are prepared to address students’ key questions and areas of confusion—without creating more work for the instructor.…Read More

This is how your infrastructure should look before your next tech rollout

Follow these guidelines to create a technology infrastructure that support teachers and students

Most educational organizations want the classroom to change; to improve teaching and learning by leveraging technology. The terms blended and flipped learning are touted extensively as useful educational goals.

However, to increase the probability of long term success and to reduce teacher/instructor frustration, organizations need to ensure that the broader fundamentals are in place before asking teachers to change. This is true whether the organization is a large university or school district, an eLearning business, or a small school of a few hundred students. (Note that I am not talking about the success of the “lone experimenters;” the innovators and early adopters who will implement change no matter what the environment is like. I am talking about organization wide long term success.)

Fundamentals fall into a number of categories. I will consider one (infrastructure) in this article and others in companion articles.
If teachers walk into a lesson and the technology regularly fails, even for just a few minutes, they lose confidence. They become frustrated and lose commitment (and who could blame them?).…Read More

Flipping the classroom when home access is a problem

A lack of reliable internet access at home can make flipping a challenge, but by no means an impossibility

Ed. note: Jess Peterson will co-present a related session, “Flipping the Classroom in Low-Socioeconomic Schools,” at this year’s FETC conference in Orlando, on Friday Jan. 15.

Ask any educator, and they’ve probably at least heard of flipping the classroom. There are articles for days about the benefits and rewards to be reaped from flipping. Plenty of teachers have given it a go, or at least considered it. Too many teachers have ruled it out on account of their students’ lack of access.

It’s true that our students come from all walks of life. We see the ones with the new Jordans or the latest iPhone, and their peers wearing the old hand-me-down sweater. All of them are our future. All of them are entitled to the best education possible. Only some of them are equipped with the means to achieve their fullest potential.…Read More