Abstract:

Flipped education is all the newly-revisited rage. The problem is, it misses some of the main tenets of good educational practice. See how studies with inner-city Milwaukee schools have changed the way we might think about flipping our content into our classroom instead of outside of it. Mobile devices, on-demand training, best practices in online education and screen capture technologies are just a few of the components reviewed and discussed.

This qualitative and quantitative study follows the sixth grade classes from two separate inner-city schools, watching their development, attitudes and learning as they experience, first hand, what it means to have content flipped ‘into’ the classroom. Through a series of self-created video lessons, the teachers broke their students into separate learning groups, teaching some of them face-to-face while the remainder had their content disseminated to them virtually. The study went through a series of modulations and alterations to ensure that all students had varied exposures to both learning styles. Tests and quizzes comprised much of the quantitative data collection while the qualitative means consisted of a melding of interview, survey, observation and teacher reflection.

The study uncovered some remarkable issues and many revealing facts about learner style, best practices, and infrastructure planning. It plays off of the flipped education view, a educational movement that has taken hold over the last decade. Although it works from the perspective of flipped educational paradigms, the study suggestions many needed changes within the conceptualization and delivery of ‘flipping’.

m-Learning, another quickly rising educational concept is one of the bands that ties this study to blended learning models, showcasing the creation and absorption of content via this particular vehicle. Hardware, applications and design flow are all incorporated into the report.

Keywords:

Mobile Computing, Flipped Education, On-demand, iPad, blended learning, m-learning.