I agree, Val.
I'm very suspicious of "Flipped Classroom" zealotry.
That is how I see much of the hype here-- it's related somehow to the latest buzz over MOOC.. blah-blah-blah, efficiency, blah-blah-blah... online-learning... empowerment... blah-blah-blah...
I've become increasingly cynical about this sort of thing, quite honestly. I think that administrators will pretty much pick up anything that is new and shiny. Even if it isn't, if you slap a patent medicine LABEL on something old and none-too-spiffy, that is sometimes enough. Administrators are like crows or raccoons, with an eye for anything shiny that might improve their status. :sigh:
Didn't we already TRY this in the 1970's with recorded video? Wasn't THAT going to cause a complete "revolution" in teaching and learning?? Oh, right. This is different. This is "disruptive technology." Sure.
It's alternative format textbooks. For visual learners, frankly,
it is a DISASTER when 'flipped' classrooms replace written texts with video snippets-- and they do.
More cynically, I think that the
actual impetus for this shift is that MOST students fail to do assigned reading and always have. The stupid part is thinking that educators can actually "fix" this problem from their end in the first place. They can't. But they've looked at the problem and concluded that students are "not sufficiently engaged" by print textbooks... "lack the attention span" for 'dry' presentations... Therefore, we need to solve this problem by making educational presentations compete with Funny YouTube Cat videos, or The People of WalMart. I'm personally more than a little appalled by that turn of events, as I see this as capitulating to completely anti-intellectual forces... and to be doing it in EDUCATION of all things is just so-- so-- well, it's profoundly wrong.
I also have to agree with Bostonian and others who point out that
never have "good" learning environments been passive in the first place. They have always been about having students engaged in active cognitive work IN classrooms-- preferably with adequate preparation prior to class via assigned reading and homework.
My daughter has been
ruined for mathematics by this incredibly wrong-headed approach, and I really very firmly believe this. She simply does not learn much from canned recordings.
But they can ask those questions the next day in class.
Yes, well... as someone who has been living this way (via online educational programming) for seven years;
there is a BIG problem with that method for gifted learners. It prevents them from learning at an appropriate rate. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this first-hand, but this is why I really urge some caution with any online provider with HG kids. Sure, it's "self-paced" but not really if you're not a total autodidact, because you spend a lot of time viewing TINY little chunks of new material and--
waiting for answers to your questions. Sometimes waiting 24 hours for the answer to a five MINUTE question. Very much of that tends to cause shut-down. It's just too energy intensive to be worth the trouble, frankly.
Besides, this is different from a textbook HOW, exactly? Oh-- right. The textbook is actually
superior in this regard because you can flip to the table of contents, the glossary, or the index in search of clarification, in a way that is not possible with a video recording.
It's not that I'm against prerecorded video lectures. I'm not. I think that they are a great supplement for students that need a slower pace, or for those that are auditory in preferred learning style. But I do NOT think that they can or should take the place of live instruction, or of textbooks.
