Kristen Kunze

Ed Tech Issue
Foundations of Education Technology
Instructor: Torrence Temple
November 3, 2014.







Ed Tech Issue

Technology is here and it is in our classrooms. The educators of today are using
imagination and technology to reach the students of tomorrow. Kroski wrote a great article on
the technology trends to watch for and the flipped classroom really interested me. The flipped
classroom has the student learn the material, via video instruction, at night and then return to
class with the information; hence the flipped classroom. The teacher then takes an assessment
to see where the students are in the understanding and uses an interactive lesson to further the
content, while freeing time for one-on-one help and interaction with the students. This is a
turnaround from the traditional teaching of yesterday and has some questioning the merit of this
new found style of teaching.
Atteberry, through research done at Harvey Mudd College in Claimont, California,
concluded there were multiple sides to the flipped classroom. After research done, from multiple
professors, with flipped and un-flipped classrooms they concluded there was no sizeable
difference among them, concluding it depended upon the teacher. Some teachers may find it
difficult to fill the classroom void without lecture and find it difficult to create interactive
activities in the classroom. The other point made by this article is the differences in subjects.
There are some subjects that this sort of method would be great or not as great for the teacher or
student.
The flipped classroom is definitely one that is in the spotlight for discussion. Brames
article sang the praises of the flipped classroom siting the benefits of the cognitive learning and
assessment prior to deeper learning and focus on problematic areas as the key to success, for the
flipped classroom. Mazur and colleagues have published results suggesting that the PI method
results in significant learning gains when compared to traditional instruction (Brame, 2013).
Ed Tech Issue

This sort of style of teaching is time consuming for the teacher and possibly more time
consuming for the student as well. The tremendous amount of hours videoing lectures and then
editing them for availability for the students should not be underestimated. The students will
have to spend a lectures time at home before their next class as well. This new idea is anything
but traditional and is therefore receiving some negative feedback from those who are
traditionalists. Either way you look at it, there is a new horizon with educational technology and
there is only more innovative and imaginative ideas that will come in the future.










Ed Tech Issue

References

Atteberry, E. (2013). Flipped Classrooms may not have any impact on learning. USA Today.
Retrieved from:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=flipping+classrooms+research&form=IE10TR&src=IE10TR&pc

Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom. Retrieved Monday, October 20, 2014 from
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom

Kroski, E. (n.d.). 7 Ed tech trends to watch in 2014 [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/7-ed-tech-trends-watch-2014/