Flipped Classroom

I must confess some initial skepticism over the idea of a flipped classroom as it sounded like yet another "fashion" trend in education.  Upon hearing more details about how a flipped classroom functions it is something that I think might have a large potential to positively affect learning.  Flipping the class so that the lecture portion of the material is watched at home on a video with the in class time used as a tutorial has enormous potential.  Like some of the videos mentioned (http://www.techsmith.com/flipped-classroom.html) the issue of students understanding in class but unable to do questions once home was a problem I encountered in high school.

I don't believe I would completely abandon the teacher directed lecture in front of a class.  I would however reserve the class lecture material for more engaging discussions where an forum of students could further an idea in a group setting.  Key problems that are universally challenging to all students could also be taken up in a more formalized interactive lecture style.

One downside that I see is that students must wait to ask questions for material presented in the video lecture portion of the course.  The ability to ask a question and immediately receive expert clarification could make comprehension difficult or lead to false understandings of the material.  Another potential downside is that the amount of video production time that the teacher takes to produce the videos could be prohibitive.  What is the best way to get around this time constraint for the teacher?  Also is it necessary to flip our classroom when Khan Academy is so widely available.

Khan Academy TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs

Tablet Computing

This is an article that summarizes current trends in technology in the classroom in higher education.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-horizon-higher-ed-shortlist.pdf

This article provides a couple of quick ideas for tablets in the classroom.  The section that mentions being able to post a tablet in a classroom that has videos of laboratory techniques instantaneously seemed useful.  The ability to refer a student to a video for reference after I have explained something would save me from explaining the same thing repetitively.

The shortcoming of the article having such a short summary of multiple of technological trends is that it lacks depth on any given subject.  The article does provide some links to other sources for more information.



This article dovetails nicely to the above article giving multiple examples of how to incorporate technology into the class to engage students.
http://edudemic.com/2012/12/25-ways-to-use-tablets-in-the-classroom/

Here is a summary of some useful apps for tablets that can be used in the classroom.
http://www.princeton.edu/hrc/documents/Using-Your-Tablet-in-the-Classroom.pdf

Something to think about with apps being able to duplicate a frog dissection; no matter how good the program is, it is still a digital abstraction from the real thing.   How much does the artificial "learning" detract from learning?