Book Review: The Flipped Classroom: Introduction to Technology and Teaching Techniques

The flipped classroom is a relatively new teaching technique that utilizes technology to turn the traditional classroom size upside down. In the traditional classroom, the teacher spends most of his or her time lecturing and giving instruction for new content. In a flipped classroom, the students use technology to receive this instruction at home. This method frees up the teacher for more guided practice, individualized assistance, and student-led learning in the classroom.

There are many resources available on this relatively new teaching method. This particular book is readily available in a Kindle edition and is written by teachers who have successfully implemented the flipped classroom with their own students. The authors propose the flipped classroom so that students can receive in formation at home and apply it in the classroom under the supervision of the teacher.

While other books focus on the application in the classroom of a flipped classroom, this book is mostly filled with ideas of how to create the best presentation of the materials for the students to access on their own. It discusses a variety of presentation methods: blogs, videos, and screencasting. While these are all valid methods, it seems like doing them all separately is to much work when websites such as sophia.com are readily available and have done much of the work for you.

The book also has a small section of assessing students' learning in the classroom. This assessment is vital, since the students do much of the learning independently, but idea should be viewed more as an application of the learning rather than a test/assessment.

Overall the book is a good introduction to the idea of a flipped classroom, but in order to become efficient in this teaching method, other resources would need to be studied.