The concept of a flipped classroom is becoming quite the buzzword in schools this year, and after talking to several teachers, we can see why. Teachers are finding that sending students home with a videotaped (or audiotaped) at-home “lecture” that explains a difficult concept reserves valuable class time for guided practice. And while the idea of flipping your classroom sounds complicated, it can be really simple with the help of a flipped classroom app.
The teachers we talked to almost unanimously said that their favorite app for flipped teaching is Explain Everything ($2.99 in the iTunes Store). Explain Everything allows teachers to photograph a note page or assignment and then explain it using an audio recording feature and even mark up the page using their finger to guide students to work out problems or answer questions. Teachers can then transfer their recording to YouTube and send it home to their students as an at-home lecture.
For an example of how this works, see how this Algebra 1 teacher flipped his classroom using Explain Everything:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y4aXlrgSmJk
And to learn how you could use apps to flip your classroom, we had one of our teachers create a lecture (yep, using Explain Everything) detailing the functionality of this app.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=J1m-OP1EVAY
The teachers we talked to said that there are other (free) apps that can also assist teachers who are looking to flip their classrooms. Although these apps have less functionality than Explain Everything, they also allow teachers record themselves and then send those taped lectures to students.
Some free apps to try are:
- Doceri (Free in the iTunes Store)
- ShowMe (Free in the iTunes Store)
- ScreenChomp (Free in the iTunes Store)
- Educreations (Free in the iTunes Store)