Lets Get Flippin'!

No one will doubt that education has always blown with the whim of trends.  Don't believe me?  Try this one.  Teachers have withitness.  Yep, that is with...it...ness.  A less politically correct term is streetwise, except streetwise in the classroom not in the hood.  There is even a large body of research on this.  Go figure.

So here we go again with a new cutely named trend by flippin' the classroom.  Except.  This works.  But we cannot prove it.  So enter the heroes: Harvey Mudd College faculty who have taken on the challenge to measure flippin's effectiveness.  And, who are the funders?  The National Science Foundation.  The organization that has done more for science teaching than any other organization.  Bar none.

Most teachers at any level have gut feelings what teaching trend will work and what will blow away with the wind.  Flippin' the classroom has features that match up with learning theories and fits into contemporary life.

This creates the gut feeling that this will work.

• Match with student life today.  They are tied to their mobile devices, mostly for social trysts, however they have them with them practically 24/7.  Don't believe me, text one of your students at 3 a.m. and push the button on your stopwatch app for how long it takes him or her to respond.  
• Match what teachers want to do.  Teachers are generally people persons.  They want to be involved with their students. They want to be just as engaged in learning activities as their students.  Didn't they spend $100,000 or more to pursue their dream in earning their degrees? Pressing buttons on a PowerPoint presentation to sleeping students just doesn't match why people go into teaching.  
• Match what teachers don't want to do.  We need to get technology into the hands of the users - students.  They are the ones plugged in.  They love it.  Now we need to make technology a learning tool, not a dating service.  

While the research on its effectiveness presses on, so should we.  Lets get flippin'.

The Center for Teaching and Learning, affectionately called the CTL has created a Faculty Support Center loaded with all the tech goodies that create the flippin' classroom.  Come and see us at the Healing Gardens, LHSB 1.704