Flipped Classroom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching

Basically, using technologies like online video for the transmission of basic content and saving class time for "the construction of meaning" - which I understand to mean the development of depth, where you do things that would more traditionally be homework, stuff that requires use of the earlier transmitted content, projects, assignments, exercises, presentations. Seems like a good idea, albeit one with a technological learning curve and an intial increase in prep time for the teacher (and a fair risk of losing control over your image since, duh, you'r handing out videos which will be subject to meme-ing.)

I wouldn't mind this approach. I like using class time for activities where the teacher talks less. Group work, and such. But as far as I can tell, the main difference between flipping your classroom and asking students to read textbook chapters is the you put all the basic content in a video now.

Or am I missing something?

I think the principle of it is that it's a waste of contact time to have the teacher explaining something out of a book to the whole class when this information could be made available online or somewhere else beforehand. This means that classes can be much more focussed on productive activities, since the receptive part can be done at home nowadays

I like the idea but I have two reservations about it:

It depends on students being highly motivated and having a lot of free time. Same for the teacher, I suppose it requires preparing a lot more content for the independent study parts. Traditionally homework is usually a review of the previous lesson which is easier to come up with than controlled preparation

I think there is something to be said for doing traditional classwork, the atmosphere is different to homework and I think a lot of students (including myself) really struggle to concentrate at home and benefit from just sitting in a classroom to do boring work with a teacher who you can ask if you are stuck

It depends on students being highly motivated and having a lot of free time.

This. I'm working in a flipped classroom now, and by and large it just isn't working with the students at our technical school.

I have found that getting them to read/watch and respond to something as homework before the class... reflecting stage 1 input...significantly improves the quality of the discussion and work they are able to produce in class. Gives them something more to talk about.  But also just prepares them and their thinking.  Moves the thinking and discussion to a higher level.  I think it worked for two reasons.  One was that because it was actually used in class, the students could see the relevance of the homework tasks and the topics were things that were worth discussing, so interesting to them, or least a measure of scope for real discussion.  I don't think I would do things any other way now.

^ what kinds of "before class" materials are we talking here? Texts you hand out? Youku videos? Video of yourself?

Calach,

This last semester it was mainly articles they read, wrote an initial response to (which was submitted as homework) and then which was discussed in class.  The articles were primarily drawn from newspaper opinion pieces and similar...and usually had both relatively good content.. plus something worth discussing (they could potentially relate to ).  This included things like raising smart kids,  improving Chinese cities, impact of modern world on health, what offices will be like in 2040.

I do a 'lite' version of that where they just have to do a very simple preview task on top of the standard textbook homework

For example, there was a class on superstitions and they had to bring in something lucky and be prepared to explain it to their partner as the warmer

That's more of a nice idea than anything else though

Unfortunately, I think flipped classrooms and MOOC ("Massively Open online Course) are going to be a thing. I randomly met a colleague today and out of the blue she started talking about both of these things, particularly insisting that the foreigners had something to offer in this regard. She was saying things like our school doesn't have video cameras in the classrooms yet, and that if people invented some kind of online program for our school, it could be very rewarding. She said there are competitive prizes available! Schools and provincial administrations offer money rewards for "the best".

Now, I say "unfortunately" because while I think flipping classrooms and online course work are a natural in China given the way young Chinese use the internet, I also think the default setup for kind of online offering is massively exploitative. If you don't work out what valuable thing you as a person in a room offer alongside you as a person in a video online, then you as a person in a room is going to be shunted aside for copies of you as a person in a video. I mean, considering how much stuff I download and the grand total of zero that I pay to the creators, obviously I'm going to think that putting myself online has to have some benefit to me besides letting everyone know just how handsome I really am.

My naive first guess is if what's online amounts to what a student could get from a textbook anyway, then there's still something for me to do in the classroom for which I can get paid. And if I craft what I put online so that it feeds into classroom activities and maybe also feeds off classroom activities, then I can keep *my* job. More so if what's online feeds into *my* classroom activities and not into other people's classroom activities.

So, what do you put online? How do you set it up? How do you use it? And how do you get paid?

Simple. I use other people's material. Downloading youtube videos and distributing them as homework, or assigning topics before class for presentations, or assigning problems that students will solve on the board next class.

I suppose a clever/paranoid person could create a "lock and key" style presentation, where the important tasty bits are covered in class.

On a seemingly (dun dun DUUNNN!) unrelated note, over the years I have seen departmental requirements such as "YOU VILL HAND IN YOUR LESSONS PLANS IMMEDIATELY ON ZEE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL AND FOREVER THEREAVVTER!" not so much as the department aiming via over-regulation to make sure their teachers are meeting a standard, but as theft.

Now, they don't actually enforce this requirement and if they did it's unlikely anyone would even look at the reams of paper, but I believe such regulations are modelled on technology transfer rules. Your expertise will be represented in tangible form and become the property of the employer, and then you can go home sweet Old Uncle Foreigner or can't you get a job in your own country why are you still here are you touching the little girls?!??!?

The internet is already a den of thieves. Add in this kind of employment framework, and online teaching exposes the teacher it wild levels of exploitation barely ever before seen but somehow "normal" and "suitable" these days because connected world.

I had to do this at my last job. Turn in your basic lesson plans [or jot down in 18 or so different doc forms what you have generally been doing], and when they come into watch your lessons if it is different than whatever you handed in chalk it up to "differentiation" - but I bet there's a greater chance of hot snow falling sideways then having to deal with this situation anyway.

The concern is actually less that one - I - would have to write lesson plans so much as it is that with this framework already in place for expropriating expertise, online teaching could easily end up with schools demanding I turn over other kinds of content too - like videos of me. Suppose it's not me who decides I'll teach online but my employer. They just wheel a video camera into my classroom and there's me saying hello to the internet. I don't see a Chinese employer imagining any difficulty with this scenario. So it's probably better that they be made to imagine, and that some kind of payment framework be invented for understanding online work as different from in person work.

The concern is actually less that one - I - would have to write lesson plans so much as it is that with this framework already in place for expropriating expertise, online teaching could easily end up with schools demanding I turn over other kinds of content too - like videos of me. Suppose it's not me who decides I'll teach online but my employer. They just wheel a video camera into my classroom and there's me saying hello to the internet. I don't see a Chinese employer imagining any difficulty with this scenario. So it's probably better that they be made to imagine, and that some kind of payment framework be invented for understanding online work as different from in person work.

I don't think that we will be replaced by videos of ourselves. not until after we die anyway!

But despite our protestations about how talented we are and so on, actually just having a westerner speaking to you is a big thing. It would work on a westerner as well in the same context. Silly transpositionL Say you are a kung fu student from a small town in America and you are studying kung fu and a real chinese kung fu teacher comes over, you'd up your game a bit. If it was just some dude showing you a video of a not even famous kung fu teacher you would not give a shizzle, however good the teacher was