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2012 was a big year for technology in education, and as promised, I’ll be diving into 5 of the top tech trends in education that are sure to take 2013 by storm! One of the biggest trends I hear teachers and administrators talking about is the Flipped Classroom. While this isn’t a new concept, it certainly became much more prominent trend over the last couple years.

A high school biology teacher in Los Gatos, California is using the power of video to implement a Flipped Classroom and transform his students’ learning environment. As Renee Patton points out in her blog post, it’s not all about the technology, but when implemented with sound pedagogy the technology can have a profound impact on student engagement and learning.

At ISTE 2012 this last year, we caught up with flipped learning pioneers, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, to discuss how the Flipped Classroom allows for greater personalized interaction that is vital to a student’s success. Bergmann and Sams, authors of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, point out that one of the greatest benefits of flipping is the increase in overall interaction – both teacher to student and student to student.

This month, we will be attending the Federal Education Technology Conference, January 28 – 31 in Orlando, Florida where our very own experts, Greg Mathison and Lance Ford, will present “Flipped and Blended Learning: Enabling Students to Learn from Home or Any Location” on Tuesday from 1 – 3 p.m. They will discuss how educators can use low-cost technologies to provide live and recorded lessons to students in any location, on any device, at any time, helping level the playing field and boosting student learning.

Got your own stories about flipping the classroom or planning to attend FETC 2013? We’d love to hear your side of ‘the flip’.