My university is all about flipped classrooms. All the teaching awards and grants are going to people who "flip" their classrooms.
From what I can tell, this indicates a willingness to dumb down material as far as you possibly can. Instead of asking students to read and write, you ask them to watch some music videos at home (but not more than 5 to 7 minutes at a time) and then entice them to come play video games in class.
Want to know more about flipping classrooms? Here's the top link from a Google search for "flipped classroom." True to style, it explains pedagogy through clip art (including an image of a student doing work from bed--with the covers pulled up!), a flow chart that never uses a concept requiring more than three words to explain, and information transfer which approaches zero.
I call it "flipping the class" for the "flipped-off classroom."
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It's interesting you posted this today as I've just heard of it today as a suggestion for the kids I tutor. While I find there's some merit for those who can "inject fun" and inspire interest in the subject, this is absolutely ridiculous. It teaches students that it's okay if things are hard; someone will always be around to compress subjects into video games and expect nothing substantial of you. I recently found out that neither phonetics nor grammatical structure are taught anymore in city schools. It seems as though they're willing to sacrifice education to the gods of flashy pointless methods.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are on philosophy and film (or video). It could well mean dumbing things down (and lord knows I've seen lots of that, possibly contributed). I wonder, though, apart from the flipped classroom issue, which involves replacing serious content with content that is flippant (see what I did there?), what you think about the proliferation of serious content (or sometimes not so serious) through multiple channels. LIke this one for example.
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