all of the latest learning strategies. The
old adage is true: “I don’t care what
you know until I know that you care.”
Many of us can trace our interest in
becoming educators to an individual
teacher who made a significant impact
on our lives. Relationships matter.
They can even influence the long-term
career choices of students. We need
to rethink education in the context of
seeing each learner as an individual
who needs specific nurturing and
guidance.
Content. In the context of positive
relationships, we need to have deeper
content and create an atmosphere
where students can more thoroughly
explore areas they are curious about.
They still need to master content.
We are not saying that we should
dismiss the work of countless people
who have crafted rich curricula and
defined the key concepts all students
should know. We acknowledge that
educators have a defined curriculum
to teach, and the content of that curriculum is important. But we need to
prepare our students to go deeper into
content. We see flipped learning as a
way to do that.
Before we flipped our classroom,
we spent the majority of our in-class
time helping students remember and
understand activities. Little time was
left for application, analysis, evaluation, and creation. But once we began
flipping, we were able to use class time
to help students go deeper with the
content as well as higher up the levels
of Bloom’s Taxonomy (see Bloom’s
Taxonomy Pyramid).
States and districts are looking
for ways to deepen student learning,
and tools that allow teachers to do
that—including flipped learning—are
in high demand. This is especially important in light of the move by most
states to college and career readiness
standards, such as the Common Core.
These standards require students to
remember and understand content
BLOOM’S TAXONOMY PYRAMID
VIDEOS ARE GOOD FOR TEACHING
LOWER-LEVEL CONCEPTS
WHICH LEAVES CLASS TIME FOR
HIGHER-ORDER ACTIVITIES
Shifting work aimed at the lower end of Bloom’s Taxonomy onto video and delivering it
individually gives teachers time in class to help students develop their higher levels of
cognition.
CREATING
EVALUATING
ANALYZING
APPLYING
as well as to apply it, analyze it, and
work with unique situations, all of
which are challenging. Not only do
the Common Core Standards apply to flipped learning, but so do the
ISTE Standards ( iste.org/standards)-particularly, the Standard for Teachers
#2: Design and Develop Digital Age
Learning Experiences and Assessments. You can read more about how
this standard is addressed in “
Applying ISTE Standards to Flipped Learning” on page 21.
Curiosity. The other thing flipped
learning facilitates is the ability to take
learning further. Young students enter
school with an innate curiosity about
the world. They come ready to learn
and ask all kinds of questions. But
something seems to happen as they
get older. School becomes less of a
priority for many, and they lose
some of their curiosity. Why?
Is it possible that schools are designed to reward conformity and discourage questioning? After all, there is
a lot of content in the world, and our
curricula cover a very small percentage of it.
How should a teacher handle a
student who is passionate about something that is not in the course description? Is there a way for the educational
community to allow students to explore what they are passionate about
without abandoning content and standards? Through the shifting of lower
cognitive tasks from the group to
the individual, flipped learning gives
educators the opportunity to explore
possible ways to engage students and
