I participated in my second Erasmus+ course during the summer holiday of 2023. I chose the „Flipped Classroom” course because the flipped classroom is a new method which I would like to integrate into my methodologies and in my opinion it would be useful to introduce in my school during the dissemination, and it would become one of our new classroom methods in the Avicenna International College. On the other hand I wanted to travel to France too. I was in Paris about 20 years ago, and I wanted to compare what has changed in one of the most important and beautiful capitals  of the world.

I booked a hotel room near the Gare du Nord because the place of the Erasmus course was close to another hotel. My accomodation was in the Montmartre hill, therefore one of my purposes was get to know better the twentieth centuries’ artists who lived there.

The day before I started the course I received an unexpected message from Anatolia Education about the classes – the place was changed because of an unexpected renovation of the original hotel. The new place of the course was an Airbnb flat close to the original location, and the whole schedule was also changed. The first and the last days of the Erasmus course were just representative events, and on 14 of July was the cultural program’s day, in which we made a visit to Montmartre, and we did a group tour with an activity’s app – this tour was very interesting and nice.

 Another surprise was the teacher’s lack of preparation – during the classes we have learned very little about the flipped classroom method. We had to do some tasks without any reason: we built an Eiffel tower from spaghettis, we colored different figures f. e. The teacher showed some applications which could be useful during the teaching. In my opinion there was one among them which is really useful – the Actionbound. This app is for planning different activities for example one or more groups of children. You can make a whole race with this application, and the groups have to use the app and solve the tasks from the beginning to the end. We used this app during the cultural trip on Friday.

This Erasmus+ experience was a very good opportunity for me to rediscover Paris, especially the Hungarian cultural places and motives and for practicing self teaching, because I have to learn alone about the flipped classroom. Now I will summarize the most important information about this method.

The keyword for this teaching technique is the flip. It means there are different sequences of the activity in the flipped classroom than the traditional way of teaching.  First step, before the class the students have to learn the material alone, in their homes. So the teachers have to make a video about the materials, and the students have to watch before the class in the school. During the class the students just practice their new knowledge, do tasks, drills and any other activities. That means the teachers in the flipped classroom method have a different role than the traditional reaching. The teacher is a helper, who just checks the students during the classwork and not the person who explains the new materials, who is the origin of science. This method offers more work for the teacher than the normal methods, because the teacher has to make digital contents and also guide the classroom work. I think this technique is a good opportunity to concentrate on applying what is learned and the practice of knowledge. The flipped classroom is good for learning the cooperation of the students which is a very important skill too. But this method isn’t perfect, nore the others are, it has some disadvantages. For example, in my experience online teaching isn’t as efficient as contact teaching, or what can we do if the students cannot watch the videos in their home.

Summarizing all the information about the flipped classroom method, this is a way which concentrates the students’ activity in the classroom, and it seems very useful to practice the materials and improve the students’ cooperative skills. And these aims are very important. Also a benefit of this teaching method is the new role of the teachers.

I am sure I will use it in my literature and grammar classes too, I can integrate it in my methods – so I am thankful for this Erasmus+ trip too.

Led and written by Andrea Juhász
10-15 July, 2023