Flipping the classroom - post-discussion

It's important to consider the length of podcasts that you assign to students, and critical to design activities that are challenging enough to make students want to listen to the lectures and be able to contribute when in class.  I think this teaching method may naturally lend itself to some classes that require mastering a certain skill.  Furthermore, getting rid of the textbook and replacing it with videos may not be the best idea.  If I were to teach a class, I would flip the classroom for certain topics and leave others to traditional lecturing.

What I think about flipping the classroom

Flipping the classroom can be a good teaching method to implement in the classroom, but I think the degree to which it is successful depends on the discipline.

Google Slides and Prezi

One assignment in intro microbiology lab is for students to find a journal article and prepare a powerpoint presentation about the article to their class.  Today, I was checking out how Google Slides and Prezi work, and I think Google Slides would be more helpful for my students. 

Students have to find time outside of class to get together and prepare powerpoint slides, or each person sends their slides to one person in the group who then merges them together, which I feel is okay, but I find that some students don't spend the time to make sure all the slides run smoothly as one continuous presentation.  They don't re-group to discuss.  Using Google Slides would allow them to add and edit slides on their own time and add comments, similar to our class wiki.  It would encourage collaborative work.  

Also, I really like the idea of Prezi - using more visuals to tell a story, but I think it will be more challenging to use when presenting data from scientific journal article, although I'd like to see what students could come up with.  Has anyone in science classes used Prezi?