Monday, October 14, 2013

Can Flips flip the classrooms?

Hearing about the flipped classroom two summers ago reminded me of the term “flip” in the early 1980s when I was a neophyte in the field of teaching. One of my students referred to one of his teachers as a “flip” or a “flippo”, because he believed this teacher was a crazy and insane individual.  I scrambled the knowledge web bank to search for the real meaning of the term flip, en route to searching for the very essence of the flipped classroom. In the process, I found out another meaning of the term “flip”. Flip actually stands for “f__ little island people”! Heartbreakingly, it is a term used by American soldiers to refer to the Filipinos during World War II. It came into widespread use in the 1980s until the 1990s, although it was first used during the Filipino immigration wave in 1930s, more than 30 years before I was born.  Although not a racist term, as it could be debated as one or not at present, it has become a racial slur and a magnet for the issue of social respect and relationships. Making the acronym more acceptable and enjoyable from the Filipino perspective, simply because Filipinos have the innate sense of concocting fun into rather uncomfortable situations, “flip” has more likely being accepted among the Filipino-American youths as either “funny-looking island people”, “friendly-looking island people”, or the more popularly used acronym for “fine-looking island people”. Well, I was fine with the last description after all! Since I became a self-professing flip since then, I opted to apply flipped classroom practices for almost a year now!
A flipped classroom employs an inverted teaching and learning method.  The opposite of the traditional classroom practice of having teachers take center stage while students absorb the learning menu sitting down, flipped classrooms bring the instructions at home for the students to eventually deliver the learning back to the classroom.  The traditional classroom experience delivers the lessons into the classroom and sends the homework home, while the flipped classroom delivers the lessons at home, and sends the homework back into the classroom. Jeremy Strayer best describes the two learning setups in the Knewton website: The traditional classroom looks at the teacher as a “sage on the stage”, while the flipped classroom looks at the teacher as a “guide on the side”. This flipped classroom model allows the students to learn lesson materials at home and communicate with their teacher and classmates online. After learning the online materials, students bring questions and insights back into the classroom for a facilitated discussion.
            How did this flipped classroom come about? In 2007, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams of the Woodland Park High School in Colorado rose to the challenge of teaching absent students of the lessons they missed. Bergmann and Sams recorded and annotated their lessons and posted these lessons online for the students to access while away from school. This opportunity did not only benefit the absentees; the students who attended the class were also interested of accessing the same lesson materials when they got home.  

Social Media and the Flipped Classrooms
            The use of a social media networking website, Edmodo, was a blessing to my classroom.  Commonly known as the “Facebook of schools”, Edmodo allowed me to post lesson videos, instructional videos, and provided me with a very successful platform for the students to access lesson materials, post their comments and questions, and interact with their classmates online.  Most of the instructional videos were posted online for the students to access and learn at home were downloaded from YouTube, which I would strongly recommend for teachers to use, since not all of these videos on YouTube are useless. In fact, I maintain a YouTube account as a teacher! Although the Board of Education blocks YouTube videos, I was still able to use them in the classroom and on Edmodo (Thanks to Real Player 10!).  Eventually, when I learned how to use ShowMe and some simple yet useful apps on my iPad, I created my own instructional videos and posted them on Edmodo for my flipped classroom!

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