One important part of flipping your class with efficacy is to make sure parents are adequately educated about the flipped classroom. They were never in a flipped class and since this is a relatively new idea, many don’t understand the model.  Their kids may go home and tell them:  “My teacher isn’t teaching anymore.  I am just learning on videos.”

One effective way to educate parents about the flipped classroom model is to flip your back to school night.  Follow these suggestions to flip your back to school night:

• Create a short (2-4 min) video explaining how your class will operate in the flipped model.
• Share the video link with your parents.  However, getting the link to the parents might be your biggest problem. Here are some ways to share:
  • If you have all of their email addresses, send the link via an email.
  • If you have elementary (primary) students, put it on a sheet of paper to send home with each child.  If you do, we suggest you use a url shortener like http://bit.ly to make it easy to type in.
  • Create a QR code that can be scanned.  Show students how to scan it so that when they go home, they can share the link with their parents.  A good QR code generator can be found at: http://www.qrstuff.com/
• Make sure that the video you create has some sort of interactivity in it.
  • You could possibly use a google doc, educannon.com, zaption.com, Camtasia Relay, or Adobe Presenter 9.
  • Ask the parents to write down two questions about the flipped class.
• Once you are at Back to School Night:
  • Have a station in the room for those who have not watched the video,
  • Answer questions about the flipped classroom model, and/or
  • Break them into small groups with a few different questions to chat about.

Another thing you may want to share with them is a blog post Jon wrote to parents:  What if Your Child is in a Flipped Class?

Lastly, we reached out via social networking and here are a few sample videos that teachers made for their back to school night events.
If you have any ideas on how to flip back to school night, please add to the comment stream below.

Katie Lanier:  High School Physics Teacher

Heidi Anderson: 9th Grade Geometry

Frank Franz:  9th Grade World History