A new school year brings a new set of ideas, goals, and a new method of learning. The campus has been introduced to a fresh way of life known as “Flipped Classroom.” This system of education is redefining how students will approach a school day.
Teachers will find an educational video, or construct an instructional video or lecture, then have that material for the student to access at home. This way, a student is able to get a grasp on the knowledge before the class begins, enabling a discussion or a series of questions to be asked, hopefully speeding up the learning process in order to move on to the application of knowledge. The aim is to have more learning at home and more worksheets and questioning in the classroom.
Flipped classroom provides a lot of opportunity to view information at home, for any help on work that may be needed at home or anywhere with access to video viewing websites.
Some students have been able to find some use out of the flipped classroom structure. In mathematics classes, students have indicated it can be helpful for problem solving and homework.
“I can replay videos on my own leisure, and the pressure of interrupting a teacher mid-lesson is completely gone,” senior Katrina Agudo said. “I feel like I’m interacting with the lesson when I take notes along side being online rather than sitting in a seat and nodding my head.”
In some classes, teachers have utilized the flipped classroom format in order to communicate through email or websites like Edmodo, giving video opportunities to students. Other teachers have recorded themselves giving lecture, with visual aids in order to help explain.
“My government teacher lectures us through video and tells us to ask questions in class,” said senior Leif Montgomery
However, for some students, there has been difficulty accessing the videos.
“I have trouble viewing the video at home sometimes just because of Firefox or my computer,” senior Cynthia Arteaga said.
Potential connectivity issues to the Internet or individual computer issues can greatly prohibit the learning process. Some students don’t learn as well on their own at home opposed to with the teacher in class.
“I would prefer to learn everything in class. I learn better in a class,” senior Joseph Hernandez said.
For some students, it’s an issue of having questions but not having the teacher on hand to answer them.
“If you have questions you can’t ask them at home and you forget the questions you had when you get to class,” senior Madeline Herrera said.
Overall, the general student response is negative, despite the accessibility of information at home.
With the introduction of the new flipped classroom teaching, there has been some new efforts to make sure sites like Youtube are available. In the past, Youtube has been blocked on campus, due to district restrictions. With the exception of teacher’s access, the general campus hasn’t been able to go to Youtube, until recently.
“For the most part, the only disruption has been complaints from students that it isn’t unblocked at school,” library clerk Michelle Dunlap said. “So far, Youtube hasn’t been used for much other than the students that want to look at videos for classes, but we will be keeping a close eye on it.”
At one point, Youtube was only partially unblocked on campus computers. However, the only portion of the website that was available was the Educational portion, which was created to categorize the different instructive videos that have been uploaded on the site.
