Flipping the Classroom
This article describes the story of Sacha Luria, an elementary school teacher in Portland, Oregon who in the fall of 2012, tested a new education strategy called "flipping the classroom". Flipping the classroom uses technology – online video instruction, laptops, DVDs of lessons – in order to reverse traditional learning. Luria quickly realized that none of her students had Internet, let alone computers at home and raised enough donations to buy six computers for the classroom that held 23 forth-graders at the high-poverty Rigler School. Alternating between computers and working with Luria, students have shown increased signs of success and improvement; "by the end of the school year [my] students have averaged two years' worth of progress in math..." (1). Teachers in other high-poverty schools have also experienced positive results after flipping classroom. This is largely due to the fact that there is an unprecedented amount of one-on-one time for students and allows them to move at their own pace. Because flipped classrooms promote working at home through online video lectures or videos produced by other teachers or textbook companies, teachers are then able to tailor their lessons to individual students. Greg Green, principal of Clintondale High School in Clinton Township, Michigan, a school much like Rigler believes that flipped classrooms could potentially close the achievement gap between low-income, minority students, and their more affluent white peers. Direct evidence of this is in the statistics: Clintondale has reduced the percentage of Fs received by students from approx. forty percent to around ten percent. Anecdotal evidence implies that flipped classrooms are more popular in wealthier suburban communities where the majority of students have Internet access at home and at school. With this in mind, some skeptics say that because this new teaching practice is so dependent on technology, it could end up leaving low-income students behind and further widening the achievement gap. At Westside High School in Macon, Ga., for instance, more than eighty-five percent of students are minorities and seventy-eight percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. With the help of a federal grant, a few teachers were able to flip their classrooms and reported improved student grades and level of engagement. Although Westside High teachers experienced some success, the students there are disadvantaged from the start as they are coming from home where parents might work two or three jobs at a time and their children are not exposed to the learning opportunities that some of their more affluent peers might have. I think that this relates back to Sassen’s TTW Plenary address which explored the distinction between informal and formal knowledge. As she argues, we seem to be more preoccupied with reinforcing existing power dynamics and pouring money into new technolohgy and web space when it could be more beneficial to explore the potential of informal knowledge. There is a much larger emphasis put on the importance of developing formal knowledge when, in actuality, informal knowledge could be equally, if not more, powerful. When given the chance to learn through a combination of mediums, numerous students at Westside expressed their excitement about working with classmates and having increased face-time with their teachers. Although flipped classroom are a promising start in using technology in education, they are not not the end-all, be-all. It is clear that by giving students a bit of control over their learning, it enhanced not only their excitement to learn but also improved the quality of their work.
Source:
http://hechingerreport.org/content/promise-of-the-flipped-classroom-eludes-poorer-school-districts_8748/