Don't Flip Out! - Part 1

Photo courtesy of GoodReads

I’ve done a fair bit of reading about flipping one’s classroom over the last few years. While I was at MPS, I was encouraged to start developing asynchronous units of work for my students – which, after completing some study on virtual classrooms with Coursera, I realised was me unwittingly taking the first step towards flipping! How exciting! I turned to my trusty Kindle to find out a bit more.

The first book I ‘picked up’ was Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Berghmann and Aaron Sams, two gentlemen credited by some as being the grandfathers of flipping classrooms. It discussed their respective journeys in developing a flipped model that worked for them, in their contexts, and offered pedagogically sound advice about how to develop your own.

I finished the book with mixed feelings. Having worked in remote, rural and regional schools, it was wonderful to hear that provisions were starting to crop up to maximise the time some secondary students spent commuting to and from school and their extra-curricular activities. The Montessorian in me was rejoicing over the possibilities for students to learn at their own pace, with as much repetition as they needed through an engaging medium. And the graduate in me – struggling to fit everything into the day for her students - was overjoyed that there was a possibility to combine the concept of meaningful home learning with more efficient use of face-to-face instruction time. Streaming or downloading instructional videos seemed like an excellent option.

On the flip side (see what I did there?!), I was aware of my urban-dwelling students’ diverse home backgrounds. Some had no access to internet. Some had no guaranteed access to a laptop or tablet. Some didn’t even have ready access to a library as a back-up (too far to walk by their primary school selves). Remote, rural and regional students in Australia, I realised, have patchy reception on their phones (sometimes in their homes). The bandwidth they have comes at a significant cost – and not all families can prioritise that above other day-to-day living costs, even if it is for their child’s education.

So what have I taken away from the book? That the model most commonly purported as the grail of flipped learning is not necessarily the best or most practical the world over. Berghmann and Sams seemed to know I was going to come to this conclusion, though, and provide a plethora of practical suggestions to trial in developing a model that worked for me and my students. Additionally, they discuss how their ‘flipped mastery’ model (regardless of how it is ‘technified’) dovetails with other best practices in education in terms of learning theory. Good for those who can implement it in justifying their choices.

If you’re after a great overview of flipped learning and how to get started in developing your own workable scheme, this is the book for you! Have you had a read? How are you going with your flipped journey? Leave a comment below!

Bergmann, Jonathon and Sams, Aaron (2012). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student Every Day. International Society for Technology in Education. Virginia: USA.