Let’s flip the classroom!

Oct 30, 2017
2 min read

Life is moving fast and as everything around us: the environment, the economy, the culture, the social context and also the EDUCATION. The arrival of the Internet and the development of the TIC’s has resulted in a huge change in the way we move: almost everything is done digitally. Same happens in education, where tablets, online tools, applications, eBooks or online dictionaries are now the main school materials.

In the learning process, the creation of PowerPoints and video tutorials have a significant importance and may help teachers in their classes. In 2007, two chemistry teachers, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, from Woodland Park High School decided to record live lessons and to broadcast them online so that the students who missed the class did not miss out on learning too. Some of the students who did attend the classes began to re-watch the videos when they reviewed for the exam.

After this reflexion we Marcos and Michael introduced us a new teaching methodology named Flipped Classroom. A flipped classroom is a student-centered learning method, different to traditional instructional frameworks, divided into two parts:

The teacher provides students with individual bases such as videos, readings…, directly on computers to be studied at home.
In class, once the preparation work is completed, students solve problems by analyzing texts or investigating solutions through interactive learning activities.

This means that now, homework, inquiry, and investigation happen in the classroom. This new strategy for teaching flips the traditional method in which “I do”, “we do”, “you do” was the principal way of teaching. Today, it has completely changed to a “you do”, “we do”, “I do” instead.

In this way, the classes become more practical because students do more activities in the classroom. The tasks that they do during the class are different depending on the level of the students. Here, it is possible to distinguish a group of students who do not understand properly the activity, another group who do the activity and the third group, the most advanced students, who help their classmates.

Considering all of this we all debated about why do we need a teacher then. Finally, we reached a conclusion that teachers are completely necessary and essential because they teach both contents and a lot of values.

Afterwards, teachers showed us some online courses such as MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses), NOOC (Nano Online Open Courses) and SPOOC (Self-Paced Open Online Courses), and different free courses like Coursera, MiriadaX or EduPill. Before finishing the day, we also learned three new tools: WeVideo, an application to edit videos, EdPuzzle, to create new videos, and Google forms, to create online questionnaires. With all these new tools, we were asked by teachers to prepare a flipped classroom about a topic. If you go to my Task 4 you will find an amazing lesson about Edgar Allan Poe! So… let’s flip the classroom!!