The Power of the Flipped Classroom: A Free Apple Book About How I Did It

§1What this book is, and where it came from

The Power of the Flipped Classroom is a free multi-touch Apple Book I published in 2016. It's the long-form treatment of the work covered in the pillar guide — production process, classroom redesign, early student data, embedded video. It has been a free download since publication and remains free now.

The book started as my Apple Distinguished Educator Summer Institute 2015 "One Best Thing" project. The Apple Distinguished Educator program selects educators worldwide for a community of practice; the Summer Institute is a multi-day gathering where each ADE writes a multi-touch book-length document on whatever pedagogical approach they're best known for. Mine, by the time I got to Berlin in 2015, was the flipped classroom — three years in at Barstow High, with two AACE conference papers behind me and the Springer randomized controlled trial still being written. ADE colleagues at the institute helped me draft, edit, and format the book during the week. Apple Education Community published it the following year, and it's been free ever since.

The Power of the Flipped Classroom

By Dr. Peter Esperanza · Apple Education Community · 2016

Free Multi-touch Embedded video "One Best Thing" 2015

A long-form Apple Book on the production rig, the classroom redesign, and the early student data behind the Numberbender flipped classroom. Two reading paths: download the canonical free version on Apple Education Community, or open it in the Apple Books app.

Download free ↓ View on Apple Books

§2What's inside

The book is structured around the same workflow the pillar guide covers — but in long form, with embedded video. It walks through the production rig (MacBook, cut-out whiteboard, colored markers), the recording flow, the editing pass, the in-class redesign that goes with each flipped lesson, the early student data from Barstow High, and a set of common mistakes I'd want any new flipper to avoid before they record their first video.

The multi-touch format is the part that distinguishes this from a PDF. Videos play inside the book itself. You can read a chapter on the production process and watch the actual lessons referenced, in line, without leaving the book. That mattered to me because the work is fundamentally about video — a text-only book about how to make instructional video would be missing the point. A reader on an iPad, MacBook, or iPhone gets the lessons and the explanation in one continuous reading experience.

If you'd rather have the compressed version, the pillar's section nine covers the production rig in two paragraphs. The book is the place to go when you want the workflow with embedded video and enough detail to actually replicate it.

§3The 2023 ADE Book Talk

In April 2023, the Apple Education Community hosted an ADE Book Talk where I walked through the book itself — what's in it, what I'd revise if I rewrote it today, and the seven years of accumulated classroom data since the 2016 publication. The recording is hosted at education.apple.com/story/250011958 on the Apple Education Community.

I treat the book and the Book Talk as a paired set. Read the book for the long form; watch the Book Talk for the gist plus what I've learned in the years since. If you only have time for one, the book — it's the canonical source. If you have time for both, watch the talk afterward, not before, so the talk lands as commentary instead of substitute.

§4How educators have actually used it

Three patterns I've seen since 2016, in roughly the order they showed up.

The most common: an individual teacher reads the book before flipping their first unit. They use it as a shoulder-to-shoulder reference while recording their first videos. Many email me afterward to tell me which chapter they re-read three times. That's the audience the book was written for, and it's the audience that still uses it most.

The second pattern: department book study. A math department or a STEM team picks the book as a summer reading and discusses it across August and September department meetings. The chapter on common mistakes tends to drive the most discussion — the prevention version is much more useful at the start of a school year than the recovery version is mid-year.

The third pattern: pre-service teacher training. A handful of education programs have used the book in their secondary-math methods courses. Pre-service teachers haven't taught yet, so the production chapter matters more to them than the classroom-redesign chapter; the redesign chapter resonates after their first practicum or student-teaching placement.

If you're using the book in any of those settings — book study, methods course, department pilot — and would like a video supplement or a Zoom Q&A, the contact page is open. I do this a few times a semester for free when the timing works.

§5The AP Calculus FRQ Reviewer series

I've also published six volumes of the AP Calculus FRQ Reviewer on Apple Books, each about twenty-nine pages, all free, all multi-touch with embedded video. They cover the standard AP Calculus AB free-response topic areas: accumulation problems, implicit differentiation, particle in motion, areas and volumes, differential equations, and function analysis. They're meant for AP Calc students working through released free-response practice questions, with a video walk-through embedded next to each problem.

Those six get their own page: AP Calculus FRQ Reviewer →.

§6FAQ