University students spend a lot of time staring at their SMART phones, but few pay much attention to their teachers. Even when they are paying attention, they never seem to ask any questions and often forget what they do hear or see in class. That is why flipped lessons make so much sense. Flipped? It's just a new term for an old idea. About 50 years ago when I was in school, we had a lot of reading homework. We read textbooks and our teachers would try to stimulate in-class discussion about the ideas or stories we had read. They might elaborate or emphasize certain points and answer questions. The basic ideas were presented outside of class. Class time was used for intellectual interaction.

With today's technology ... notes, written lessons, and video lectures can be posted and presented online via the Internet. Your students can read them and watch them on their cellphones ... anytime and anywhere. If they don't understand at first, they can read them and watch them again and again. They can rewind videos and watch them at their own pace, rather than in a class at a fixed pace. Class time can be used for teacher-student and student-student interaction and discussion.

I had a website for more than 20 years. In March 2022 I retired. I have passed many of my webpages on to my colleague Prof. Ssali to post on his website.

If you or your colleagues have any interest in creating or expanding your own websites, I would be happy to share my ideas and webpages with you. Please take a look at any of the many webpages that might interest you. If you would like to get together (anywhere in the Nagoya area), please give me a phone call or send me a short c-mail message.

R. Jeffrey Blair
Aichi Gakuin University
General Education Division
Phone/c-mail: 080-6912-5957