Salman Khan on the inverted classroom

Salman Khan, of the Khan Academy, sounds off on the potential of pre-recorded video lectures to change education in the video below. He calls it “flipping” the classroom, but around here we call it the inverted classroom.

I like especially that Salman made the point that the main effect of inverting the classroom is to humanize it. Rather than delivering a one-size-fits-all lecture, the lecture is put where it will be of the most use to the greatest number of students -- namely, online and outside of class -- leaving the teacher free to focus on individual students during class. This was the point I made in this article -- that the purpose of technology ought to be to enhance rather than replace human relationships.

I hope somewhere that he, or somebody, spends a bit more time discussing exactly how the teachers in the one school district he mentions in the talk actually implemented the inverted classroom, and what kinds of issues they ran up against. Ironically, the greatest resistance I get with the inverted classroom is from students themselves, namely a small but vocal group who believe that this sort of thing isn’t “real teaching”. I wonder if the K-12 teachers who use this model encounter that, or if it’s just a phenomenon among college-aged students.