The Flipped Classroom: Introduction to Technology and Teaching Techniques by Cristine Boles, Emily Curtiss, Peter Hanson, Sarah Ingold, Shelby Johnson, David Kelly, Yukari Nakagawa, Kiley Purchio, Jennifer Bardsley (illustrator)

Let me start out with.. wow.. that is a long list of authors. I stumbled upon this book while doing some research about flipping classrooms in rural environments.

My first impression was that this was not going to be a great read. When the idea of flipping a classroom was presented as basically recording a teacher lecturing and having students watch it at home, I was less than impressed. There is so much more to flipping than watching a video. In spite of my initial hunch, I went ahead and plunged forward.

I found myself wondering as I read the book how much teaching the authors had actually done. Not wanting to taint my impression of the book, I did not research that tidbit until after finishing the book.

The information presented in the book is extremely basic. It is basic to the point of being common knowledge for most of us. There was some information that was simply out of date. For example, the authors stated that teachers often use Posterous for blogging. Posterous, however, had been shut down for quite some time at the time this book was published.

The book is riddled with grammatical errors. Additionally, the authors tend to jump around considerably. For example, while talking about blogging, there is a section about Google Docs, then it is back to blogging. It is apparent that the authors just took individually written sections and lumped them together to make a book.

I honestly do wish I could say that things get better as the book goes along, however, it does not. The book remains vague throughout the entire reading experience.

As educators, our time is valuable. We read and research to learn new practices and get new ideas. Simply stated, this is not the book you probably want to read to learn about flipping a classroom. Save some time and grab a different book about flipping classrooms.