1. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 1/6
How to Flip Your Classroom
HOW TO FLIP YOUR CLASSROOM
2012-06-30
by Richard White
Flipping a classroom consists of off-loading (usually to the Internet) some of the non-
interactive aspects of one’s classroom, in favor of using time in-class for activities that take
advantage of the teacher’s immediate presence.
Perhaps the most obvious example might be this:
At school At home
Standard
classroom
Student listens to teacher
introduce new math topic
Student goes home and tries
to do homework, often
unsuccessfully and without the
opportunity to get questions
answered in a timely manner.
At home At school
Flipped
classroom
Student watches brief video
explanation of new topic
online, or reads new material
to be discussed in class the
next day.
Student works on “homework”
problems, with teacher
answering questions or
providing clarifying follow-up
as necessary.
Pretty straightforward, right? It’s a good idea, and there’s lots to recommend it. In fact, you
may already be implementing some aspects of the flipped model, even if nobody has ever
referred to it by that name before. Some teachers give students time in class to read a chapter
in novel, and then discuss it in the remaining class time. Others choose to assign the reading as
homework, leaving more time in class for re-reading passages, interpreting what the author
has written, or general discussion.
If you’ve done something like this, congratulations—you’re officially part of the most recent
trend in education, and you should feel free to strut around saying things like, “‘Inverted
2. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 2/6
learning?’ Honey, I’ve been flipping my class for years…”
If you haven’t tried this yet, or you’re just looking for a few ideas on how to get started trying
this out, let’s take a look at the stops involved in doing such a thing. And then read below for
some specific bits of advice regarding the process of converting to a flipped classroom.
3. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 3/6
Things to think about:
Start with a single day, or a single week, or a single unit.
You don’t need to reorganize your entire semester to begin trying out a flipped model. A day
or two will give you a chance to see what the benefits and challenges are, and give you some
good ideas on how to go about designing a flipped model on a larger scale.
Be patient with the students.
It may take them a little time to adjust to this at first. Under the traditional model, it’s easy for
a teacher to ascertain whether a student has turned in a homework assignment, and easy for
students to recognize something tangible like the piece of paper with their writing on it. A
flipped instruction model is going to ask them dosomething rather than make something—
watch a video, read this section, interview their parents about something—and this is a little
different from what they ordinarily do for homework.
What can you flip in yourclass?
We all teach different subjects, in different ways, so it’s a uniquely personal challenge, figuring
out what you can try flipping in your own class.
Here are some ideas to get you started, following the same format listed above.
The French Revolution
At school At home
4. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 4/6
Standard
classroom
Teacher lectures on the the
origins of the French
Revolution
Student goes home and does
a worksheet or write answers
to problems from a textbook.
At home At school
Flipped
classroom
Student at home watches
aKhan Academy
introduction to the French
Revolution, and is asked to
take notes on that
presentation.
Student comes in to class with
notes prepared for a
discussion. Students are asked
to take additional notes as the
discussion proceeds, and
teacher collects notes at the
end of class for evaluation.
Adding Fractions
At school At home
Standard
classroom
Teacher presents the idea of
adding fractions with different
denominators, and does an
example.
Student goes home and does
homework problems from his
or her textbook.
At home At school
Flipped
classroom
Student at home watches
aYouTube video on adding
fractions, and is asked to do
attempt two different practice
problems at home.
Student comes in to class with
practice problems completed
(or not), and instructor gives
an additional 15 problems of
varying degrees of difficulty to
reinforce the skill.
You get the idea.
Think about assessment.
When students walk into class the next morning, how are you going to know whether or not
the students have done their flipped-style homework from the night before? A warm-up
activity? A quiz? A discussion in which each student is monitored for participation? My own
5. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 5/6
students tend to try to get away with doing less rather than more, so you’ll need to identify a
means for checking that they’re doing their new homework.
Allow for varying access to technology.
If students don’t have some sort of comparable access to technology, you’ll need to develop
strategies for managing those differences. If a video lesson is being watched online, a teacher
might send home a DVD that the student can watch at home. At-school access to the video, in
the library perhaps, can be arranged for during other times of the school day. These factors can
complicate your efforts to flip the classroom, but it’s important that all students be
accommodated in one way or another.
Create your own resources.
Ultimately, there will come a point at which you’ll find that what you need your students to see
doesn’t yet exist, or maybe you’ll be inspired to develop something unique and personalized for
them. Creating and uploading videos to YouTube is a relatively easy thing to do with the
webcam that’s probably already included in your laptop computer. If you want a higher
production value, or you want to capture your computer screen while showing a PowerPoint
presentation, you’ll almost certainly have to buy some software that will allow you to
experiment with that process. TechSmith’s Camtasiafor both PC and Mac, and
Telestream’sScreenflow for the Mac, are currently popular and powerful screen capture
utilities. If you run Linux, you can do a $ sudo apt-get install xvidcapto
install XVidCap, a live screen capture utility that’s very good, but lacks some of the high-end
editing capabilities built into Camtasia and Screenflow.
Make your materials available on a website.
Google’s YouTube is a powerful means of delivering videos, but it can be a distracting place to
send a student for flipped homework assignments. At some point you’ll almost certainly want
to create a webpage or website that will give students a one-stop shop for finding materials
used in your course. Your school may offer the means of putting up a course webpage, but if
not, you can certainly create your own. The quickest, easiest, and certainly cheapest way to do
this is to use Google’s Sites feature, available with any Google account. Once you’ve got your
page set up, you can use it to easily deliver flipped assignments to your students.
When you look at all of that up there, it seems like it’s a lot of work, but you certainly don’t
6. 17/3/2014 How to Flip Your Classroom « hybridclassroom.com
http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=819 6/6
have to jump into this all at once. Begin at the beginning, and move forward as your time and
teaching assignment allow.
