Accessibility in a flipped classroom
Another issue is accessibility. As 21st century educators, we live in a highly connected environment. Email is streamed to our phones, content is available at our fingertips, and communication is nearly instantaneous. For a decent percentage of our students, this is not the case. I teach in a school that has a high population of free and reduced lunch students as well as Title I students. When polling the class, just over 75% said that they have internet connections at home.
Understanding that this is certainly an issue, I have built the lessons 2 to 5 days ahead of time and opened up my classroom for students to come in and get help. Students only have (approximately) 2 videos to watch each week. The other instruction is delivered during class using more traditional methods, but build off of the previous flip or lead into the upcoming flip.
Understanding that this is certainly an issue, I have built the lessons 2 to 5 days ahead of time and opened up my classroom for students to come in and get help. Students only have (approximately) 2 videos to watch each week. The other instruction is delivered during class using more traditional methods, but build off of the previous flip or lead into the upcoming flip.
- If you plan to use ShowMe or Educreations, be aware that many of my students have said that they could not view the videos on their phones. I'm not exactly sure if it's a network issue, a compatibility issue, or the students not knowing how to access their videos (it is more than likely a combination of those).
- If you are using YouTube, consider your school's filtering system. If you plan to use Vimeo, the same thing applies from the ShowMe or Educreations problem.
- There is no perfect solution, other than recording your own videos, editing them to be smaller file sizes, and uploading them directly to your site (via Weebly or other free resources). This is certainly an option, but it is more time consuming than the others and detracts from the ease of the entire process.