– a Singaporean teacher's storeroom 🖖
翻转课堂一词流行好一阵了，孰不知翻转学习是其“衍进版”的概念。这两者有何不同？翻转学习又和华文、语文教学的关系是什么？这一篇东西其实是写来作引起讨论之用的。所以内容上还存在许多可进一步探讨、深究的地方 (:
created this piece of writing for the purpose of facilitating internal discussion. it’s not a fully polished piece of writing in the academic sense, especially from the theoretical perspectives of SLA. but well, the discussions on Feb 22 morning was good (but could be better) i thought (:
so here‘s the piece for your reading pleasure. 一共8页，中英文各4页:
while browsing through the NMC Horizon report K-12 2015 report released just two days ago, another report “Reimagining Teaching in a Blended Classroom” prepared by TNTP mentioned on pg.20 grabbed my attention instead.
as my current work led me into exploring blended learning for teachers’ PD, i put on a teachers’ PD lens too while reading. i think “REIMAGINING” is appropriately chosen. the very conception of learning, teaching, and even classroom needs to be re-visited.
while some teachers are jumping (bravely? blindly?) onto the flipped classroom bandwagon, i believe this report may draw parallel lessons on why “flipping” works for some teachers, and not all, yet. for instance, the traditional roles of a teacher can be classified into 3 types: guide, integrator, researcher & developer (p.2-3). such a proposal of roles brings in the opportunity for teachers to collaborate, specialise, and/or develop professionally. as the report pointed out, for blended learning to work (or flipped learning if one prefers), the whole staffing needs is going to be different. in our system, i imagine the need to (re)develop teachers in various competencies to take on 1, 2, or all 3 roles concurrently. in order for blended/flipped learning to be sustainable, a whole-department (or even a whole school) approach is the way to go. as i draw on my short 1-year experience in introducing blended PD, i can imagine it could be overwhelming for many teachers, if one were to work alone. taking on all 3 roles at one go is going to be an extremely steep learning curve.
but before we could talk about getting it going, are teachers ready for the reimagined roles? it’s definitely not going to make life easier for any teacher (change itself is already a painful process; learning is a slow and time-consuming process; and coupled with the reality that ICT in teaching & learning is not just about efficiency). fundamental shift in a teacher’s beliefs (esp. epistemic) is needed. teachers need to reexamine their assumptions of their own teaching, and their students’ learning.
i would think this is a report that all teachers who intend to introduce flipped learning as part of their teaching & learning activities must read. it provides much food for thought.
how exciting (:
had the chance to meet up with fellow teacher Evelyn, and to hear her share abt her experience in flipping her P4 CL class. she had recorded a series of 24 videos (that included ppt slides, and videos) to get things going at the start. students are tasked to watch one video a week, as it coincides with one lesson a week. it was slow to get things going at first, cultivating students the habit of watching the videos weekly. “they were so used to the standard way of teaching/learning since P1, P2 & P3”, and now students are required to do something that’s very different from the past.
having the videos (prepared using Camtasia) allowed Evelyn time to engage students in more interactions in class. she designed games to engage her students. but in order to participate in the games, students learnt that they need to watch the videos beforehand. homework is done in class, so students do not have to do homework after school.
based on what i heard, i believe what Evelyn has done laid good foundation to free up classroom teaching time, which won’t go away any time soon in a school’s factory-style set up, especially during foundation years at primary level. looking forward to the day to attend a lesson in the classroom to see how discourse is taking place with such an implementation.
if the possibilities to explore alternative/more classroom discourse doesnt excite you, “我的最差的学生从前拿24分，最近拿了一个40分。” (out of 45), any results-oriented teacher could be persuaded somewhat to the very least i presume? 😛
it’s been 6 months since i shared my thoughts on how i perceive a flipped classroom. and only recently, i came upon FLN (led by Aaron Sams and colleagues)’s definition of flipped classroom in hope to “counter common misconceptions and bring clarity to discussions”, using another term “flipped learning”.
in this 2-page document, of particular interest to me is the outlining of the 4 pillars of FLIP (p.2):
the 11-point checklist would be useful for teachers for quick assessment of their existing practices. whether it can be classified truly as flipped learning or flipped classroom, or it’s just a manifestation as a result of misconception(s). 张冠李戴 is not too uncommon i would think.
where Intentional content is concerned, i think it’s good for teachers to provide ‘starters’ to get students going. along the way, we should allow them to be content co-curators in the spirit of SDL n CoL. of cos, from an exam point of view, teachers could be the one to curate things that are “for exams” aspects of learning, and students co-curate things that extends their learning beyond the scope of exams. in this way, teachers and students could become co-creators of knowledge in a classroom (：
— [update, Jul 15, 2015]
it looks like my original conception below is extremely outdated, especially point no.4. it appears teachers worldwide have been looking for various ways to engage students during the classroom time. and here’s a post with 20 ways. check it out (:
— [/update]
the idea of “flipping” the classroom is not new (has been hearing it floating around for at least 1-2 yrs now). while different pple may use the “flip” term, different conceptions may exist behind those uses. my understanding of it is this:
1. it removes the didactic teaching of a lesson away from the face-to-face (f2f) lesson
2. the didactic part is replaced by the use of ICT-media online. usually videos as it captures images, animations, and sound nicely all-in-one.
3. students are expected to “learn” from the media posted online
4. with the f2f time freed-up, teachers are able to let students do homework and provide closer (or even 1:1 guidance) for students
the above presented some basic assumptions about teaching and learning:
a. teaching is a didactic activity. this is most often found in schools that implement a lecture (with or without tutorials) system. it’s no wonder flipped classrooms have seen many ‘success’ in higher ed (an example) settings as most of us may recall how useful lectures are, perhaps even from (my) JC days. a replacement of the talking head/person in front of the lecture hall with a video definitely presents multiple opportunities, esp. when you have lecturers who speak too softly, speak too fast, speak too slow, talk about things you can read off texts, or talk about things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand and you are expected to read on your own anyway. video, with the ability to play, replay, fast-forward, is simply a saviour!
a related qn would be: is our current CL classrooms (you may replace CL with any subject u teach) as didactic as a lecture? current teachers, especially the teachers who have walked their practicum journey with me during 2012-2013 would know they would never graduate from NIE if that’s the case. since our classroom practices have already shifted towards more interaction, albeit IRE interactions still exist largely, how much would our students benefit from a flip?
b. teachers post a video of him/herself talking, students watch, and students learn! **WOW** if learning takes place so simply, why do we need teachers stepping into the classrooms at all? just employ a group of “expert teachers” to produce videos, ask students to buy a portable internet-enabled video player, watch the videos, and they will have learnt everything and anything. **WOW** from this perspective, part of the flipped classroom idea takes on an extreme naive assumption of learning. and why does it remind me of educational videos produced by CDIS and played back on Channel 8 some 20-30 yrs ago? or, Sesame Street, anyone?
i would like to also ask: if teachers claim that students are unmotivated during f2f lessons, how motivated would they be to watch/hear you talking to them for an hour or two AFTER SCHOOL? to learn? so, the flip idea appears to require students who are already motivated to learn (for whatever reason(s)) to begin with, isn’t it?
while posting videos appear to be the hype to some when they learnt about the flip idea, it is the f2f time that is the key consideration. WHAT are we going to do now with time supposedly freed up? say, i. let students do more drill-and-practice related to the topic in the video?, ii. engage students in discussion about the topic in the video?, iii. organise students into groups to discuss their ideas about the videos followed by some presentations?, iv. give students enrichment materials related but beyond the scope of the video and do (i) to (iii)?
now, does one realise that (i) to (iv) still presents a largely teacher-centered way of managing learning activities? while there may be group work, the task, the goal, the topic, and the timeline are all determined by teachers. it is still very far away, if not going against our vision to develop 21 century learners, or self-directed (SDL) & collaborative (CoL) learners.
therefore up to this point, any implementation of “flipped classroom” without the use of ICT (an example), or any implementation that does not advance students’ 21cc, especially SDL and CoL with ICT, isn’t good enough for me. these are just age-old practices relabelled to bring some hype. full-stop.
flipped classroom has to service the rethinking about education (e.g. Bereiter, 2002) if we were to ready our students for the knowledge society. blindly jumping onto this bandwagon, or any other to come in future, isn’t going to help.