By Dr. Harry Tennant
Friday, April 20, 2012 Education Ride 365: Flipping Our Paradigm Can Benefit Students, Parents, & Teachers Alike!One recurring theme I have heard from parents across the country over the course of Education Ride 365---regarding their involvement in the education process of their children---is a feeling of inadequacy about helping their youngsters with homework. Parents are typically a decade or two removed from their experience in the classroom, the information is often taught differently than it was when they were in school, and the level of academic rigor tends to be greater than they recall being exposed to. In my last post I wrote about a school district in Texas that is encouraging students to record their teacher's lesson on smart phones. It occurred to me later another likely beneficiary of this practice (or, perhaps better yet, school-produced recorded lessons) is the parent trying to help their child with homework...and even the parent who wants to continue learning or refresh lessons learned years before when he/she was in school. A comment left in response to my last post noted an emerging trend being referred to as "flipped classrooms." The commenter wrote: A related emerging practice is to use video to reverse the roles of
classwork and homework. (Sorry, I don't remember the name of it.)
Teachers record videos of their lectures and assign viewing them as
homework. Then class time is spent in applying the lesson, working
through problems, clarifying and so on. It also provides the benefit
that class time can be spent in students helping students, which is
beneficial for both the helper and helpee.
It seems to me that this practice will likely benefit students, parents, and teachers alike. Here are just a few ways that jump right out at me: Students:
There are no doubt other benefits for students, parents, and teachers. What do you think? Posted at 2:41 PM Keywords: Education Ride 365 , EdClick , Cycle Of Education , Technology , Instruction , Flipped Clasrooms , Instruction , Homework , Parent Involvement , Technology 2 Comments |
Seth in Garland said... I think that this is a fascinating idea that, as you said, seems to have far reaching benefits. I hope that they start trying this out on a larger scale. Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:47 PM |
Harry said... Buckminster Fuller wrote a book called Education Automation in the 1960s. He thought that the new technology of video tape would change education by "automating" the lecture. Since a recorded lecture could be frequently reused, it would justify the cost of better produced lectures. It didn't work out as he expected. First, lectures are not very effective for teaching. Second, course content often benefits from change. But the technology has gotten to the point where creating videos which include presentation and demos are pretty easy to make or remake. And the notion of lectures as homework with the real business of learning going on in the classroom comes a lot closer to Fuller's vision of high quality yet efficient education. Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:36 PM |