Flipping Without Video: Is It Possible?

– by Vincenza Leone –

When you ask a teacher who is not specialized in Flipped Learning what it is, the first answer is probably: a way to teach with video. This is the most spread idea about FL. It is not exactly what it is. According to Flipped Learning 3.0. The Operating System for the Future of Talent Development, by Jon Bergmann and Errol St. Clair Smith (2017), “Flipped Learning is NOT primarily about the videos.” In Chapter eight, they assert:

One misconception about Flipped Learning is that it is a technological solution to training. The perception is that you must first start with the technology and then follow up with something to do in class. Contrary to this view, Flipped Learning is a fundamentally good educational practice that happens to have a technological component (p. 139).

The question is how much and how often we need to have the technological component in the individual space? Even if I am a supporter of technology at school and in teaching/learning activities, I am also sure that we cannot define every situation the same, so that sometimes we need to give a different shape to the individual space. Just to give a couple of examples from my personal experience, I would tell what I developed along the time:

1. One example is when you teach foreign literature to students of a different mother tongue. In that case, the request of reading at home can help to focus more on the aim of learning the language and the content at the same time. It is a technique I usually link to the Drama in Education (DiE) technique I use in my English Literature Courses. Of course you can choose to offer students a video stimulus as individual space, but, in my opinion, it can be more rewarding to ask them to concentrate on the reading and using their learning to start the group space.
2. One more example is offered by historical events where you can ask students to listen to the original speeches of some well-known people and then you prepare the students for the group space enriching the school activities with reference to the individual space work, where the home learning has to find a shared shape. All this, of course, is from the point of view of an ESL teacher, who has a dual focus on learning: language and content.

How about you?  Have you flipped any lessons without video? If so, please share below.