I have a number of reservations about flipped classrooms (see The Best Posts On The “Flipped Classroom” Idea) — both regarding pedagogy and practical issues (many students just wouldn’t do it).

However, I have found that some of the sites on my The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress list useful for a different situation — sometimes I have a student who is facing so many challenges, that periodically he/she needs a break from what we’re doing in class (and the class needs a break from them). During some of those times, I put the student at my desk in front of the computer, and he/she does a different project using one of those sites. It’s a far better alternative than sending the student to the office on a “referral.”

The two sites I think are the best for those situations are SAS Curriculum Pathways and TED-Ed talks.

Perhaps I might be the only teacher out there who had a hard time figuring out how flipping those TED videos worked, but I was able to finally figure out how to view student statistics (once you register, you have to click on the “You” you see in the screen, not on your profile). I don’t have students register since I only have one student at a time use them.

I also found a few posts from other blogs useful in figuring out to use TED-Ed:

TED-Ed: Flipping the Learning

TED-Ed: Flipping the Learning, Part 2

TED-ED: Creating a Flipped Lesson

Teacher Training Videos has an excellent video tutorial on how to create “Flipped” versions of Ted Talk lessons.