Flipping This Class: A Journey from Professor to Popularizer

Flipping This Class: A Journey from Professor to Popularizer

New WordPress Plugin Lets You Build Your Own Online School

New WordPress Plugin Lets You Build Your Own Online School
Fascinating program that allows you to teach anything online...

Opinion: Papert led revolution in learning

Opinion: Papert led revolution in learning
One of the educational leaders, including his views on some of the innovative trends in school, such as the flipped classroom, that I've implemented in my classroom...

Arguments and Answers for the Flipped Classroom

“Do kids really need MORE screen time?” The only answer to this one is probably: LOL. I learned more from “screen time” than I ever did in school. Screen time is good, as Stephen Berlin Johnson argues in Everything Bad Is Good For You. Meanwhile–as the objection implies–kids are already spending tons of time in front of screens. Should they spend that time in front of Spongebob or in front of school lectures?
“Do kids really need MORE homework?” This is pretty amazing. This argument cites the absolutely correct point that homework doesn’t help kids. Need it be pointed out that the whole point of the flipped classroom is that it replaces homework? This is rather like saying that gasoline is bad for the environment as an argument against electric cars.
“The Digital Divide.” This is actually a reasonable argument. The flipped classroom model assumes that kids have access to internet access and internet-enabled devices, and this is not yet true for everyone, though it will increasingly get that way as prices go ever lower. That being said, it seems pretty obvious that if the political/social will to go to a flipped classroom model gets there, so will be the will to get devices and internet access to all those who need it. It’s also worth noting that the current education system does nothing to ameliorate socioeconomic stratification, indeed, worsens it.
”Who is getting rich?” It’s arguments like these that are so spurious that they leave one speechless. What a zero-sum, bitter mentality it requires! Who would refuse a solution to a serious problem if it also incidentally made someone they’re not sure they like potentially a bit richer? “Should students really have to sit through commercials to get an education?” Note the assumption that an advertising-driven business model for online lectures is necessary. Of course, the biggest producers of educational videos, like Khan Academy and Marginal Revolution University, are non-profits. This argument includes a YouTube logo, and it’s true that insofar as many of these videos (though by no means all, and by no means as a requirement) are hosted on YouTube, YouTube becomes more valuable for their being hosted there. And you know what else? If you train students at using computers, that probably makes Microsoft a bit more valuable, too. And get this: if you train students in math and science, they can get jobs at companies, and those companies will get more valuable!!! Where will it end???
“You can put lipstick on a pig, BUT…” This one is so staggering it is worth quoting in extenso: ”A pig is a pig. Teaching by video is based on a didactic, lecture based philosophy. Learning, however, is not simply a matter of passively sitting and absorbing information. Students need to find and critically assess their own resources. If all students are asked to do is consume recorded lectured [sic.], how will they ever become critical assessors of information?” This is kind of amazing. The whole idea of the flipped classroom model is to get rid of homework, which doesn’t work, and replace it with videos so that all classroom can be interactive. The way students “learn” today is by “passively sitting and absorbing (?) information.” Yes, if “all” students are asked to do is to watch lectures, we might not get very far (then again, there’s a strong argument that video lectures are still preferable to teacher lectures). But again, the whole point of the lectures is to enable much more hands-on teaching during the day. But again, what’s most striking here is the hidden assumptions. What is the “pig” here that is supposedly being applied lipstick? The “pig” is that kids naturally hate learning new things and that any attempt to get them to learn more betterer is doomed to fail. In my experience, most of the public school teachers I know, in their heart of hearts, after years of rough experience, believe this. But as Maria Montessori (and anyone who’s spent time with kids with an open mind) knew well, the opposite is true. With the right setting, kids love to learn. At bottom, any new classroom model is doomed to fail because teaching really doesn’t make any difference. This is what teachers’ unions say when they say that teacher accountability is futile because what matters to achievement is social conditions.



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Latest Scholar Info

Flipped Classroom Chart using Bloom's Taxonomy

Excellent chart created demonstrating the Flipped Classroom setting, and how it benefits the Bloom's Taxonomy structure...https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0VIwE5hKSWteVdMNGNrWGpUUy1DM0NocGE5c0lhQQ

Scholarly Book Review: Open Wound - Recommended Highly!!!

Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont A shotgun misfires inside the American Fur Company store in Northern Michigan, and Alexis St. Martin’s death appears imminent. It’s 1822, and, as the leaders of Mackinac Island examine St. Martin’s shot-riddled torso, they decide not to incur a single expense on behalf of the indentured fur trapper. They even go so far as to dismiss the attention of U.S. Army Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont, the frontier fort’s only doctor. But in the name of charity and goodness, Beaumont ignores the orders and saves the young man’s life. What neither the doctor nor his patient understands—yet—is that even as Beaumont’s care of St. Martin continues for decades, the motives and merits of his attention are far from clear. Thus begins the true story that inspired Dr. Jason Karlawish’s acclaimed novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont, which was featured as part of NYAM’s Author Night Series on October 10. Rooted deeply in historic fact, Open Wound artfully fictionalizes the complex, lifelong relationship between Beaumont and his illiterate French Canadian patient. The young trapper’s injury never completely healed, Dr. Karlawish explained, leaving a hole into his stomach that the curious doctor used as a window to explore the chemical nature of digestion. “Beaumont realized, ‘I have a living laboratory to study digestion, right here on the frontier of America, and I’m going to do it,’” Dr. Karlawish said. Eager to rise up from his humble origins and self-conscious that his medical training occurred as an apprentice to a rural physician rather than at an elite university, Beaumont seized the opportunity to perform hundreds of experiments upon his patient’s stomach in order to write a book that he hoped would establish his legitimacy and secure his prosperity. After the book’s publication, he managed to build a career as a successful and respected physician, although his motives in his treatment of Alexis St. Martin were later called into question in court when he was testifying as an expert witness on a case. “It’s about transformations—the transformation from patient to subject to employee to object, and from physician to scientist to entrepreneur,” Dr. Karlawish said of the book. It’s about how people succeed in these transformations, and also how they fail.” About Dr. Beaumont, he added, “It’s the story of a most modern American man—he wanted to be someone.” Jason Karlawish, MD is Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is Board-certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine. He is Associate Director of and practicing clinician in the Penn Memory Center; a Senior Fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; on the faculty of the Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society; a Fellow of the Institute of Aging; and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard David Institute of Health Economics, all at the University of Pennsylvania.