Flipped classrooms upend traditional approach to teaching
Published: Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 4:53 p.m. Last Modified:
Friday, March 8, 2013 at 7:40 a.m. PALM COAST — When Heidi
Alves' students walked into her classroom one recent morning,
the sleepy-eyed teenagers were no strangers to diffusion. The
Flagler Palm Coast High School biology students had been asked
to watch a 15-minute video about osmosis, diffusion and cell
transport before they set foot in Alves' class that day. Alves
then spent 30 minutes reviewing how substances move through a
membrane and her ninth-graders were ready to begin a time-
honored experiment that relies on dialysis tubing, starch,
iodine and water to demonstrate the concept. Alves joined a
growing number of teachers in the fall when she started
experimenting with a "flipped" method to teaching: Instead of
classroom lectures, students are first exposed to content via
videos they watch on their home computers or smartphones. Then
they spend class time working on lab experiments or