Librarians and FLIP Teaching

Valenza, J. K. (2012). The flipping librarian. Teacher Librarian, 40(2), 22-25.

Synopsis:

Valenza begins the article by discussing the increasing use of flip teaching that is occurring in education. She does note that although it is too early to gather accurate research on the success or failure of this teaching style a study done by TechLearning has found it to be favorably received by teachers and has proven to be a great asset in helping students raise their test scores. The remainder of the article focuses on the ways that either school or public librarians can become involved in flip teaching. Valenza identifies that just as librarians collaborate with teachers to enhance traditional lesson plans so can they work with teachers to either initiate flip teaching in their classrooms or to enhance programs they may already be using. Another thing Valenza identifies is the opportunity for school librarians to bring flip teaching into schools that do not have it yet by starting it in the library.

Review:

I found the article to be a very informational read, it had enough material about flip teaching to help me understand it without being solely about explaining the concept. The connection Valenza makes between what librarians have traditionally done and how this is just an extension was very well done. She made the point that as the ‘tech experts’ in the schools this role should naturally fall to school librarians. One of the greatest aspects of this article is the multitude of resources that are supplied through the article. For readers interested in learning more about flip teaching and its history, there is a link supplied to the founders website. The last page of the article is a collection of platforms that can be used to create flipped classrooms. Each platform that is listed has a brief description and the author even made the effort to supply a number of free ones. Another great aspect is the links to examples of flipped classrooms and projects that arose from flipped classrooms. Even though the idea of librarians as leaders in flipped teaching may seem kind of obvious, this article more than makes up for that with the plethora of resources it contains.

Posted by Jessica King