Friday, December 13, 2013

Dayton, David

"How 'Flipped' Classrooms are Turning the Traditional School Day Upside-Down"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/american-graduate/july-dec13/flipped_12-11.html

I just saw this in my Google news feed a few days back -- Newshour did a brief bit on flipped classrooms, interviewing principals and teachers involved in the process and highlighting some of the benefits.  The comments section on the page had me thinking, though -- some folks were drawing connections between this model and the traditional university seminar model, while others raised the question of motivation on the part of the students at home.

The only thing that disturbed me is that the presentation seemed to imply that there is an either/or situation here -- either a classroom consists of teachers lecturing in front of the class, and the class practices at home, OR the class reads/watches the lecture at home, then practices in class.  Logically, though, a well-designed classroom learning environment should have both direct instruction (the lecture) and teacher-assisted practice of skills (guided and independent practice).

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