Flipped Classroom and the Library

The Flipped Classroom (or Reverse Instruction or Teacher Vodcasting) appears to be best suited for older students as a teaching pedagogy. The flipped classroom is when teachers put lectures online as videos and assign students to watch them as homework; then students come to class with questions regarding the lecture. Class becomes a time to question, experiment, and collaborate with others while the teacher is the expert and coach.

Sharing videos is a great tool that wasn't available when I was a growing up. Our homework was usually to read a chapter from a textbook or novel. I would have loved having access to teachers lectures where I could watch and review at my own pace. This allows for differenciated learning and addresses more learning styles. What a terrific new technology tool for delivering curriculum content!

Would this learning method work in an elementary setting? If elementary students were required to watch a video at home they would need the skills to get to the webpage, have knowledge of computer videoplayers, have enough bandwidth at home, know what buffering is, know how to troubleshoot, and maybe need knowledge of how to download videos. It would be interesting to see what issues came up if you had grade 5 students do this. One consideration is that all students need Internet access and a computer. We are a 1 to 1 Laptop school; however, students don't get a laptop until they enter Middle School.

I don't know how I would apply the flipped classroom to the elementary library. We are having an author visit and maybe I should post a video on him and tell students to watch it. My problem is that I see the students on a 10 day rotation and weeks go by before they come to the library again. I also don't assign homework. I'm not saying it can't be done, I just don't see how it would work with my current setup. Maybe a flexible schedule would work? Seems like the only way I could give it a go is to collaborate with a teacher.