I recently attended the Holton-Arms School blended learning workshop and learning lab. Patty Carver, Linda Caleb, and Mary Dobroth led the event. They provided information and practice sessions to give participants experience in how they could use blended learning opportunities in their teaching.

Here are some of my notes from the day:

-It is about the pedagogy, not the tech.

-There is a real hope that in teaching AP teachers can move away from content delivery and teacher-centered to student-centered and discussion-based learning

-Blended learning is another way to help students use the tools they use outside of school in school.

-BL helps with the efficient use of time. Teachers are not restricted by short classroom periods as the learning continues outside the school day.

-Blended learning involves collaboration to learn together outside of school and when in class. This collaboration differs between posting resources, reading, etc., on one’s LMS for consumption. Real blended learning has students learning from each other outside of the classroom.

-Need to help educate parents about blended and complete online learning. It comes down to the definition of teaching when folks question paying for tuition that involves less teacher-centered learning situations. We need to educate parents that there are many other ways to teach besides direct instruction. If we are really about differentiation, we should use many instructional and assessment strategies, whether blending or not.

-Good blended learning starts with teachers changing pedagogy and using technology effectively to build learning opportunities outside the classroom. This can be a huge task that involves change for many teachers. It would help if you did a lot of planning to make this shift to make sure you have finances and time for teachers to receive the preparation and ongoing support. A few questions: How do you structure the PD time not to make it an add-on? What is learning? How ready are teachers to take some risks?

-If you are moving towards learning goals that are more concept-based, it is more challenging to assess concepts compared to knowledge.

-Going blended means empowering students to have more control over their learning. This can be fine for many students with the disposition and skills to handle being more independent. But for many, it is a struggle. How will you help your students be more independent and self-directed? How will you support the students needing much more oversight and those with specific learning needs? Remember that we need to offer differentiation in our blended learning environment as in our regular classroom.

-Total the number of hours per week that you would typically want the students to spend face-to-face as you plan their time outside of class. I don’t want to make blended learning take more time.

-Real need to think of teachers as designers.

-It is a skill that takes time to learn to facilitate running your discussion boards. We must teach students how to ask each other questions to make comments constructively.

-Look to have students view the projects they create outside class to use a discussion board for reflections and discussion. One way to approach this is to assign groups of students to watch specific projects to make their comments.

I compiled a web page of blended learning resources to prepare for the workshop. I offer examples from ACDS and my collection of WebQuests and Learning Pursuit expeditions to model good and maybe not-so-good ways to extend the learning beyond the class period. Some had strong virtual collaboration opportunities in them.

 

Image Source: Patty Carver created the infographic at the top of the post which is just a small portion of the original. See the full version here.