Hi Kelsey,

See my post and my previous comment on Tracy's post. I too share the same practical constraints at my schools.

I thought Tracy's suggestion of providing the technology infrastructure in the school and during the school day was a good solution. Your thoughts on that?

Rohan

Tracy, I support your point on the cost of flipped classrooms. It was part of my comment too.

I would like to add that once we move outside the West, and school budgets drop dramatically (as in my own schools in India), these challenges become even greater.

The idea of doing online lessons in the day is a good one, but I guess it comes at the cost of the 'Flexibility' that is a key component of flipped learning.

I too agree with Brooke's point here.

What worries me is that over time, teachers would be incentivised to push ever greater chunks of work into the pre-class "home-work" load.

At our schools, we have been trying to move a "no homework" model in order to allow children to be freed from the intense stress Indian schools put them under and to allow them to use their time at home to pursue other interests and spend time with the family.

I wonder how this works with flipped classrooms. One possible answer would be to designate free time during the school day for personal work. But, wouldn't that frustrate the flexibilty that Flipped learning is meant to offer?

While the potential benefits of flipped learning seem exciting, I am cautious for several reasons.

My own background is in creating low cost schools in India. Here, our biggest constraint is often resources. In such a scenario, there are significant difficulties in implementing a flipped classroom and it makes me wonder whether this would be more of a model for resource rich schools.

The big concerns are:

1) Cost – The model requires access to individual devices and broadband at home. This could be challenging in some locations and in certain communities.

2) Teacher sophistication – in the developing world, teacher quality is generally an issue. Thus, strictly controlled lesson plans are used (with admittedly mixed results). Without highly skilled teachers, who have high tech literacy, would flipped learning be possible?

Another concern for me is the relationship between flipped classrooms and Personalised Learning (PL). It appears to me that flipped learning is just a lighter version of PL. For schools that have the financial and human resources, would it not make sense to push the envelope all the way and use tech to implement personalised learning?

ROHAN PARIKH

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