Image retrieved from here!
The whole idea behind learning at a distance seems to be to get away from the traditional style of education where the teacher stands at the front of the room and lectures her silent and diligent note-taking students. While education has been striving to move beyond this method for a long time now, only more recently have educators started to consider the advantages of incorporating technology into instruction. There are so many more resources now than ever before for students to facilitate their own learning, and by creating online interactive activities, teachers can provide students with the tools they need to do so. As a teacher, one thing I really like about the flipped learning method is that by giving students the opportunity to engage with material at home, students can work at their own pace (Hadman, McKnight, McKnight, & Arfstrom, 2013), taking time to make sure they are really grasping the concepts, or moving on to something else if things are clicking quickly. When I was a student, I tended to understand things pretty much right away, but when it came to doing the actual work it always took me ages to complete it to my satisfaction. I remember friends of mine (and my brother) being the exact opposite, or somewhere in between. Dedicating certain elements of learning to self-guided, self-paced sessions seems to be a great way to get students on the same page and to discover where the in-class focus needs to be.
Although I did not use it in my lesson for this week’s challenge activity, I did mess around quite a bit with InspirARTion, which was a lot of fun. I am excited to come up with ways to incorporate the tool into future lessons, possibly flipped ones!
Reference:
Hadman, N., McKnight, P., McKnight, K., & Arfstrom, K.M. (2013). A review of flipped learning. Retrieved from: http://www.flippedlearning.org/cms/lib07/VA01923112/Centricity/Domain/41/LitReview_FlippedLearning.pdf