A Flipped Scenario:

Source: http://goo.gl/EZYe7

When Corlita left Seguin Elementary school, in her backpack she had something that was worth more than everything she had in her home, including the clothes on her back–an Apple iPad 3. Her teacher had put it in her hands, shown her how she could access the teacher videos on tomorrow’s lessons. Corlita couldn’t wait to get home, a corner of the Children’s Shelter set aside for children to do their homework. After dinner, she planned to snuggle up and watch the videos. As a 5th grader without access to television, watching her teacher talk would be just wonderful.
After dinner, though, her Mom showed up to pick her up. 

“Sweetie,” she started, the moisture of tears damp upon her cheeks, “we’re going home to Grandma’s!”
“What about my homework, Mamí?”
“No te preocupes, amor. We’ll move Tuesday through Friday, and you get a vacation! We can drop your books off to Ms. Englehart at the door and she can walk them over to your old school tomorrow morning!”

In urban centers, children not only face poverty, but also high mobility between campuses in a school district, or school districts within their “home” city. Worse, turbulent home environments make learning at home an unstable proposition. Flipped classroom boast great results, but what about the poor, the homeless, who fight for a bite to eat in the night, trying to survive the chaos of parents unable to keep themselves, much less their children, in a stable environment conducive to learning?

As wonderful as the flipped classroom appears to be, it relies on several key ideas:

1. lectures can be seen at home, while homework activities are done in class
2. more face to face time is spent by teachers with students applying knowledge
3. students can login to some online learning system to watch videos and chat with each other.
4. more student interaction in the classroom

As a parent of two children who have access to technology, I’m not sure I’m prepare to have them come up to be “introduced” to hard-hitting, advanced placement content absent a teacher. Even though we’ve seen students moving online to access content, everyone knows the interaction is where learning happens. But absent a teacher, how is interaction in some online learning system enabling grade 3-12 students to learn?

How do students build the discipline to learn on their own in turbulent home environments?

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure