Flipped classrooms: From concept to reality using Google Apps

Flipped classrooms use in-class time to work on learning materials that were previously explored by the students on their own (e.g. pre-recorded presentations, instructional videos, etc.). Any e-learning platform can be used to flip a classroom / course, but they suffer from an original sin - they can just as well be used to support traditional teacher-centred models, where the course site works as a repository of slides used during plenary classes delivered in lecture halls. Besides this historical handicap, most e-learning platforms offer relatively poor collaborative environments, particularly if we consider the standard sharing facilities of social platforms like Facebook, Google+ (G+), etc. The portfolio of resources included in the Google Apps for Education program, on the other hand, offers a powerful toolbox that can be used to build rich collaborative environments. Ending up with teacher-centred models is much harder in the Google Apps world, where a pervasive collaborative strategy can be made to spread across a teaching and learning framework built as a Google site. This paper presents the essential Google Apps that can be used in this context, proposes a pedagogical model that ensures collaborative, student-centred learning, and describes how a teaching and learning framework can be built using the tools comprised in the Google Apps for Education portfolio. The reusable template offered as a result of this work is available online at http://goo.gl/wllUk.