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Tag: blended learning

Snowmageddon and Virtual School Preparation

January 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

storm

Is your school/district ready for extended school closure due to weather or other factors? We are preparing for a blizzard here in Virginia as folks in Washington, DC, will experience the full force of winter storm Jonas.

I have written here and spoken often on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast about the value of developing blended to virtual learning programs in one’s school. There are many reasons for doing both, with one big one being ready to continue learning in case of a big storm like we are about to experience here in Virginia.

In the best conditions, one’s school would form a committee to research, plan and implement a blended virtual learning program. We did this at Hong Kong International School after we had to quickly respond to extended school closure due to an outbreak of SARS. We learned much in reactive mode as we constructed our virtual school to serve our families. One big lesson was that we practiced fire drills, and we needed to practice virtual school.

The virtual school committee began the annual procedure of running a week of virtual school in which teachers, students, and families connected to our online tools for learning. Our experience responding to the SARS closure expanded our blended learning when school reopened. It was a natural step to practice for the possibility that our school could close again. For more insight into our experiences, here is an article describing the response to the crisis.

With many schools having other priorities than planning for virtual school, one can still provide ideas and resources for the short-term closing of one’s school. It might provide a framework to build from in case your school might be closed for several days. Here is an example of a short listing of tools I put together to share with the teachers at my school.

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With the advancing snowstorm and the possibility of another Snowmageddon, here are some ideas to support student learning if we miss more school days. We have several online tools and resources that students can connect to for skill work, inquiry, creation, collaboration, and direct instruction. 

Skill Development:

–DreamBox (students can access at our LR website > Students > Math)

-Web Resources Math and Technology pages for math, typing, and coding skills

-myON

-Tumblebooks and other eBooks accessed at the Library Web page

-The Using Information Web Resources page also has several online reading sites for younger students and information sources for our older students

–Quizlet is a vast collection of flashcards, quizzes, and other searchable resources to share with your students. You can also create your own.

Inquiry:

Access the databases on our Library Web page. Notice the direct link to the databases, but there is also a listing by grade level further down the page. See the attached database and tool password listing. Finding or creating your WebQuest is a terrific way to support inquiry, collaboration, and learning product creation.

Creation and Collaboration:

–Wixie (grades 1-5)

-Google Apps (grades 3-6)

-The Web Resources Creating page has several fun and creative activities for our youngest students.

Direct Instruction:

–Khan Academy and other tutorial sites

-See the PD & ICL Web page for a complete listing of potential instructional resources, including TED Talks, iTunes U, and the idea of sharing educational podcasts for your students to listen to.

-Teacher-created screencast videos and podcasts> I can provide more information if you would like to create a screencast or podcast. Here are a couple of resources to give screencasting a go. Your school computer comes with Snag It, which you might have used for grabbing screenshots. It also can capture video as you open docs and websites, etc., on your screen as you voice record information for your students. If you use a Mac, you can use the built-in QuickTime Player. There are helpful tutorials on YouTube for both tools.

-Blackboard has a built-in podcast recorder (Voice Podcaster) found in the Tools section of your classroom course. Use Wixie as an instructional tool to support blended to-virtual learning. You can create videos that include voice-over explanations of images, diagrams, drawings, etc., that you build into your presentation and then share with your students via the Web. Check out the Wixie resource page for more information, including tutorials.

Sharing Your Virtual School Package:

So how can you share these resources with your students? Several of you are using Google Classroom to post resources. Blackboard is another helpful platform. Another choice is to create a simple site like our Web Resources using Google Sites or a free provider like Weebly. You also can create a Google Doc to share directly with your students if you are in our upper elementary. Consider creating a Google Doc in your personal account for the younger students and making it public. You can then email your parents the link for easy access. Our school Google Doc accounts cannot be shared publicly. The same goes for creating a Google Site using your school account.

Let me know how I can help if you want to use any of these resources and tools. For more information on blended to virtual learning, check out our blended learning page at Web Resources for Learning.

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Blending Parent Education

January 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Blended Parent Edu

Does your school offer on-campus education presentations for parents? You might have your admin and teachers periodically sharing information on your programs. Our Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) team has given a few information-sharing sessions with parents at the Washington International School. You can access them in the Parent section of our Library Website.

Sometimes these presentations can be rushed as there is so much information to share with parents. There can be limited time for parents to process the information to be comfortable asking questions. Attendance at these presentations can also be problematic. While it can be helpful to post the presentations online as we do, they still need all the verbal explanations of each slide.

As we are blending and flipping PD, staff meetings, etc., doing the same with these parent information sessions makes sense. Schools can do a video recording of the presentation sessions to post to the Web afterward. Another approach is to thoroughly blend the learning by creating screencasts and videoing the presentations ahead of time for parents to view before the day of the presentation. They then can attend the presentations or decide that they have all the information needed on the topic.

The value of blending by giving parents visuals and audio ahead of time is just the same as with their children. They have time to consume the information at their own pace to build their understanding while formulating questions. The questions can be posted to the school’s LMS forum to keep the discussion virtual. 

Another approach is to blend the learning by requesting that parents view the presentation video to bring their questions and ideas to the on-campus presentation. This shifts the focus of the meeting time to a discussion and learning opportunity as the presentation has already been made.

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Blended Learning Workshop at Holton-Arms School

April 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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.

Virtual School Providers in the News

December 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The Washington Post, New York Times, and WSJ published articles in the past month about virtual school providers. The primary provider is K12, located in Northern Virginia. Tom Ashbrook, on his On Point radio show, also covered this topic with his usual finesse in trying to show all sides of the issue. Diane Rhem just produced a show looking at how well our higher education system is functioning in the US, looking at for-profit online providers as well. So, whether you have a long holiday drive or some downtime during the holidays, check the links to the articles and podcasts at the end of this post.

I continue to look for all the information I can find to decipher what is working and not working regarding virtual learning providers. As a curriculum designer and teacher who has been using a blended learning environment in my teaching for many years, I understand how much curriculum development work is needed to create a learning community for online students. Just as we want project-based, collaborative learning driven by students’ questions and curiosity in our regular classrooms, we must put in the extra design time to create learning activities that involve collaboration and engagement for our online students to stretch their minds to the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

While it is good when topics we discuss in the blogosphere make it to the mainstream, it is taking my best information literacy skills to work through the following articles and podcasts to get at the facts. I have many questions for companies like K12, Kaplan, Connections Education, etc., and I would love to see some of their units of study to see how they build community for their learners.

WP article

NYT article

WSJ article

Tom Ashbrook podcast

Diane Rehm podcast

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