Grade Keeper: Flipped Classroom A New Learning Revolution

There has been a growing buzz around a recently coined phrase " Flipped Classroom". This term starts to take root in education as more and more educators are discovering it. So what is this all about and what are its advantages in learning and teaching? ( Awesome Infographic included below )

Flipped Classroom is an inverted method of instruction where teaching and learning take place online outside of the class while homework is done in the classroom. Advocators of this approach believe that this is the ideal method of instruction in our digital age. They basically build their judgement on the following facts :

Flipped Classroom shifts the learning responsibility and ownership from the teacher's hands into the students'.
Students tend to perform better when they control when, where and how they learn.
Teachers no longer dispense knowledge but rather guide and direct while students are the real active learners
Teachers create animated videos and interactive lessons and lectures and students access them at home in advance of class even. In this way all students can re-watch the video tutorials whenever they want.
Classroom time can be geared towards data collection, collaboration, and application.
Class becomes a place for students to work through problems, advance concepts, and engage in collaborative learning.
Flipped Classroom also "allows teachers to reflect on and develop quality and engaging learning opportunities and options for internalization, creation, and application of content rather than just fluff or time filling assignments."

Here is a model of Flipped Classroom as provided by Jackie Gerstein

Flipped Classroom depends a lot on educational technology and web 2.0 tools such as podcasting and screencasting applications.

"In most Flipped Classrooms, there is an active and intentional transfer of some of the information delivery to outside of the classroom with the goal of freeing up time to make better use of the face-to-face interaction in school. When appropriate, information transfer typically takes advantage of technologies like podcasting or screencasting. This allows for more time to individualize instruction in the class time and keeps content alive for remediation, review, or other reference when needed. Learners have immediate and easy access to any topic when they need it, leaving the teacher with more opportunities to expand on higher order thinking skills and enrichment. Offloading some information transfer allows a classroom to develop that understands the need for teacher accessibility to overlap with cognitive load. That is, when students are assimilating information, creating new ideas, etc. (upper end of Bloom's Taxonomy) the teacher is present to help scaffold them through that process."

A direct and concrete example of Flipped Classroom concept is the popular Khan Academy. This website has completely reshaped home instruction via providing more than 2800 free videos and tutorials available in 16 languages and covering a wide range of topics such as Math, Physics, Geometry, cosmology, microeconomics and many more. Flipped Classroom should not be thought of as a single stand alone instruction cycle but rather as a part of a general educational systems that overlaps with other instructional tools such as Blended Learning, Universal Design for Learning, Inquiry Learning, Reverse Learning, and Online Learning.