Is the Future About Flipping?

I thought it was kinda funny that I sat down to write this post on “Flipping” the classroom last night and the internet was down. I’ll state right off the bat that I think flipping the classroom is a really effective way to deliver content when done correctly.

That said I’m struggling to really get into it as I teach Kidergarten and most of what I’ve read suggests that the appropriate age would be from 5th grade up. If anyone has seen any programs that are working for kids younger than that please share them with me.

For those that are new to the idea of Flipping the classroom here is a Prezi on the subject:

You can find this Prezi and moer about flipping the classroom in the post “Flipped Classroom Defined” on the Digital Sandbox website.

Here are a couple more places to learn more about what flipping is all about and to hear what others have to say about it:

1. A post from UWCSEA’s Digital Literacy Blog from UWCSEA: The Flipped Classroom – so what exactly am I flipping?

2. A post on the Connected Principals site to check out. It has some great links to further reading on the subject.

A super great resource for the “flip” is the Khan Academy website.

With a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 240 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

2,700 is quite a few videos! The website is organized very well so that you can find what you are looking for fairly easy. It states on the website at the time this was written they have delivered 88,065,639 lessons. That’s major!

The Kahn Academy takes it a step further than just flipping a traditional classroom though. They’re aim is “providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere”. Very cool! They provide a variety of assessment which can help to provide data in order to help inform you along the way. You can even gather data on a whole classroom. I’m telling you it’s super cool, if you teach you should check it out.

As I said earlier I think this is a great idea but I struggle to find it’s place in kindergarten. So much of kindergarten is focused on social and emotional intelligence which commonly takes place through direct interaction between individuals. In addition, logistically it would be very difficult for this format to work without direct supervision from a parent. Since kindergartener are just leaning to read they would need a parent to help at home and not all families are in a position to do that. I think it could be done but it would take quite an investment from the parents.

I’m excited to see where this development is headed. What do you see as the benefit/drawback of such systems and do you think there is an appropriate age for flipping the classroom?