Does "Flipped Learning" really work?

For this blog assignment I spent some time wandering around on the eschoolnews website.  I found an article that I really liked about a new concept of teaching where learning is done at home and the homework is done in the classroom.  The link for the article can be found here :http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/02/09/a-first-hand-look-inside-a-flipped-classroom/?   This idea of "flipped learning" really had me intrigued.  It is this idea that rather than having a teacher in the classroom lecture, students are given an Ipad and told to watch 15-20 minute lectures from their own homes.  After watching the lecture, students take assessments that help the teacher to see where the kids are at and what needs to be worked on in class.  The teacher can look at the scores each day before school to get an idea of who needs help with what. During the day, then, students are given their assignments to work on based on what they learned the night before.
There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to this system, but I think it is a great idea.  We talked about something very similar to this in my EDPS 362 class recently.  We tried to figure out if actually having a computer teach the class could be a viable option.  And although I don't think we can ever totally replace teachers, technology is becoming more and more important in our society and we have to know how to use it.  The idea that  kids can monitor their own learning from their homes is a great concept.  One might worry that kids won't actually watch the lectures and thus, won't learn anything.  While I think that could be an issue, the article says that most kids were very excited about watching the lectures.  I also think it provides a very unique opportunity that lets parents be actively involved in what their child is learning.
Also, by working in the classroom, the teacher is readily available for questions.  Kids don't have to come in for extra help, because that is what is going to be happening throughout the day.  I love the idea that kids can ask the questions they have right when they have them rather than waiting until the next day to try and figure out what it was that was confusing them.
I don't think that this kind of instruction is always going to work or that it is possible for every school to teach this way.  That is a really unrealistic way of looking at this idea.  However, I think there is a lot of value in changing up the way we teach on a regular basis to truly be the best teachers we can be (as cheesy as that sounds.)  When we keep up with what actually holds our students' attention, we are going to be very effective teachers who are always working to help our students to learn in the best possible way.

Student-friendly objectives

Writing student-friendly learning objectives is so important.  Like he said in the article, it makes a big difference in whether or not a student learns what it is they are supposed to learn.  If students know ahead of time what they are supposed to learn, it is a lot easier for them know when they have reached their goals.  When kids can see that they have learned what they are supposed to, they will have a great sense of accomplishment.  I think the biggest help technology can be is the amount of information on the internet.  Writing student-friendly objectives is difficult, but with lots of examples on the internet, we, as teachers, can see good ways to go about writing objectives that will make sense.  Also, if we are lucky enough to have smartboards in our classrooms, we can use that technology as well.  We can write the objectives on the smartboard and work with students to help them understand the objective.  If there is something that the students still don't understand, we can work through it as a class, on the smartboard, to word it in a way that the students understand.