Flipping classrooms: with Salman Kahn

Flipping the classroom is a topic that has come up more and more as I work towards becoming an educator, and when I first heard of flipped classes I honestly did not know what was meant by it (I had to ask of course). I had mixed feeling about implementation, and have been cautious about how strongly I agree or disagree with others on the topic. For this reflection I watched the TED Talk by Salman Kahn, who began the Kahn Academy series of YouTube videos and has now developed those into a robust educational site with software developed with collaboration from teachers, and are working to form a truly global classroom.

The idea of using these videos as an aid for flipping classrooms actually came from some teachers that began to flip their own classes when the videos were just recently put up on YouTube. The teachers would assign videos to their students as homework, and then work on exercises and practice problems during class time. In this way the students can interact and help each other, and the teachers get one on-one-time helping students with individual areas of struggle as opposed to a one size fits all lecture followed by students struggling with homework on their own.

As with anything, the system only works when said system is well developed, andhe current iteration of the Kahn Academy definitely fits that bill. As a teacher I could create a classroom, register my students, and track their activity and progress through learning modules, this overcomes the greatest hurdle of changing any system; accountability. The classic classrooms enforcement of student accountability was based on the turning in of assignments for a grade, which in turn motivates the students to actually do the work, so as long as the teacher has access to see that their students are watching the videos and can tie those to a grade, the system is essentially the same. Except now the lecture portion is being done at the individual pace of the students, instead of at the pace of each class which can leave some students behind. The equivalent to a student playing the video then leaving the room and doing something in another room, is just the same as a student copying another students work, it will probably happen and the signs will be clear when it does. Furthermore, since the teachers are having more interaction with their students, they will be more in touch with those students abilities, and better able to detect problems with study habits.

some of the points that stood out to me during the talk were:

• When Salman Kahn first started making these videos to tutor his cousins, they actually preffered the videos to one-on-one interaction because they could rewind, and pause the videos, or watch them again without felling like they were wasting their cousins time, and the video never got frustrated with them.
• snapshot tests: Kahn spoke about how assessments usually just take a snapshot of how a student is doing at a particular time, and through data Kahn Academy found that the pace that any individual student excels changes, so the snapshot could be very different just a few short days later, in terns of which students appear to be "gifted" or "slow"
• Swiss cheese knowledge: when students do not fully understand a particular lesson, but have to move on simply because the class has moved on whether they "passed the test" or not. this leads to struggle down the road when they may need that concept they do not fully understand to learn the next module or lesson.

as a future educator I have been very intrigued by the idea of running a flipped classroom. One of my classes last semester was taught as a flipped class, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and felt like I got a lot out of the experience. furthermore, there are numerous opportunities provided by flipped classrooms to incorporate and fulfill every one of the ISTE standards for students and teachers alike. Particularly those concepts involving critical thinking and group-work, as examples and problems will be tackled in class the course material can be more challenging.