Last week in EDUC 504 we had a great guest lecturer
in former Mac'er John Palmer '00. John
Palmer his novel idea of "Flipping Physics" in an entertaining and
captivating fashion. Flipping Physics is
a unique concept that quite literally flips the classroom, I'll explain. John has modified his class where the
students learn the material at home and come to class prepared to ask questions
and do their homework. I should add that
John is a semi-professional video editor and creates videos for his students to
watch and learn from while at home.
After watching his videos I must say they are really well done, entertaining,
and funny. Although most of the material
goes way over my head because I am a terrible physicist, there were a few
points that he made more easy to at least ponder. John uses his basement and his acting skills
to create funny skits in which he presents students with that nights
material.
By "Flipping
Physics" John creates a classroom that allows students to focus and work
through their homework problems. This
gives students the opportunity to ask questions regarding the homework while in
class. Additionally, John can also go
over the problems at the end of class and can also work through tough problems
at the front of the room if confusion arises.
This model does require students to do the learning at home, but this is
made fun with John's entertaining and well done videos. Through the lecture John also talked about
how a lot of time is saved within the class by adapting the flipped classroom
model. He also showed us some evidence
that further backed up his claim that flipping a classroom creates a more
effective learning environment. He did
this by averaging all the quizzes and tests from two semesters, one from a "traditional"
classroom model, and the other of a "flipped" classroom. His results concluded that the
"flipped" model was slightly more effective seeing a three percent
increase when compared to the "traditional" classroom model. I don't see myself using the flipped
classroom model in my history classes but I still respect the model and thought
John's lecturer and presentation was very insightful. I admire his dedication and intuitive
approach to the field of education.
Gr! I just wrote a long comment and the site deleted it!
ReplyDeleteAnyway - I loved Jon Palmers presentation as well. I thought it was really interesting because he is such an eclectic person to begin with but he is also so talented with audio-visual materials and a former Mac-er so I was even more reeled in. I couldn't believe that the videos took place in his classroom! They looked like real classrooms!!
I don’t think I would ever use flipped classroom in its full capacity either. It seems like so much extra work (why Jon quit his teaching job) for very meak improvements in grades. I think I would definitely use movies like those that Jon showed us for supplementary materials. I love making films like this and editing them on some of the programs Jon talked about, and I think my students would enjoy them. We could watch them in class together to learn a certain grammatical concept, or practice pronunciation, and the student would have access to them at home as well.
Why don’t you think you would ever use flipped classroom?
I am also interested in why not use a flipped classroom? I can agree that I don't think I would use it on a normal basis. It would be something that I choose to do maybe once a week or every other week. As of right now, I don't know if I can create a classroom culture where homework is done consistently. That would ruin the whole point of a flipped classroom.
ReplyDeleteI can agree with Leah, that it is a lot of extra planning and may require some skill to do so. However, we do not all need to have professional editing skills like Jon has. The video can be very mediocre and might just show you doing your lesson on the white board.
For history, it might be worthwhile to look into every once and a while. I can say that you will miss out on the input from the class about some of the historical events. This may be a key part of your lessons. I remember back in my history classes, I always asked one too many questions diving too deep into the political nature of the time or some other issue of the time.