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Creating Successful Blended-Learning Classrooms - Education Week Teacher

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Creating Successful Blended-Learning Classrooms - Education Week Teacher

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We all know the feeling of having our class finally approach cruising altitude-only to hear that our peers, administrators, and the Internet at large have just discovered the next best way of ensuring student success.

For some educators, blended learning—that is, learning that combines face-to-face instruction with online work—is turbulence in their flight path. Peter West recently addressed the challenges that experienced educators face when considering a blended model. When teachers embrace blended-learning environments, they have to relinquish authority over content and time-the comfort of cruise control-in exchange for an asynchronous, individualized, and messy process.

But I've found that the sacrifices are worth the benefits. If teachers want to remain relevant, there's really no alternative in a world where modern learning can easily outpace traditional teaching.

What is Blended Learning?

Blended learning means many things to many people. he education technology company Knewton suggests that a blended-learning environment has six different models: face-to-face driver, rotation, flex, online lab, self-blend, and online driver. It also states that "blended learning refers to any time a student learns, at least in part, at a brick and mortar facility and through online delivery with student control over time, place, path or pace."

The six models are just clay to work with, not pre-set molds. A blended-learning model should never be left out to harden-it's important to keep the clay malleable and ready to respond to environment, innovation, and student need. I originally developed my blended-learning style through an interest in flipped learning. Having viewed the video work of Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams, I became intrigued by their method and slowly started adapting my classroom to function like theirs (though I never did find time to create my own videos).

If you want to explore blended learning but avoid the whiplash and frenzy that often accompany new learning trends, break your blended-learning model into three essential components: online delivery, student control, and the "brick and mortar" experience. Then choose elements that you are comfortable with and curious about-and start tinkering. Here are some suggestions for getting started.

Tech-Inclined? Start With Online Delivery

The nexus of any blended-learning course will be an online platform that supports content delivery, administration, and asynchronous learning. The technology of an effective blended-learning environment will be defined far more by its infrastructure than by some "app of the day."

Whichever platform you choose, don't be afraid to regard it as a continuous work in progress. You will always be tinkering here and there, adjusting details, and updating policies. (The personal pages I have hyperlinked in this article are in an ongoing state of "under renovation.")

Most schools provide some of the functionality of an online-learning environment) or learning management system)-at the very least for grading, attendance, and other administrative aspects. If your school doesn't provide class space for content delivery and you feel comfortable with blogging, try Edublogs, Google Sites, or Wordpress for creating a core class site. All have free versions and extensive support databases. Keep in mind that blogs aren't just online journals: They also offer the option to create static pages that can link to content.

You can also gently bend toward the blend via online-assessment tools and strategies like Juno or Google Forms. These allow you to deliver assessments online and asynchronously. They also offer a number of methods to collect and analyze student data. If you're feeling a little more daring and you want to assess concrete details and data (and abandon some of your summative-style quizzes in favor of memory-building activities), try Memrise. Memrise utilizes visual aids and memory games to develop long-term memory of key terms and concepts in a fun community atmosphere that is easily gamified. Students buy in immediately, cheating becomes moot, and the results are impressive. Who said learning couldn't be fun?

Social Justice Advocate? Start With Student Control

Remember how enthusiastically you discussed student control of the class in your teacher education program? Now it's time to put your money where your mouth is—and be amazed by the results.

Of course, adopting a blended-learning model doesn't mean immediately turning over the asylum to the inmates. As Suzie Boss argues, students need to be carefully taught how to work in a messy learning setting. The invitation to participate should be regarded as a measured democratic apprenticeship and not a ticket to mob rule.

To ease students into their roles as democratic participants in their own development, ensure that you provide them with a definition of a social contract with clear expectations. Then work on project content. But always remember (and remind your students) that control is a privilege of negotiation, not a popularity-sanctioned right.

Students will not just cotton on and take responsibility for their own learning-they will buy in to a process that they co-create and co-own with you.

UDL or PBL Guru? Start With Brick and Mortar

When I was serving as the instructional coach at my last school, our guidance counselor, who was preparing to teach a literature class for the semester, asked me during a meeting, "What percentage of the time should I be talking, and what percentage should they be talking?" I replied, "Ideally, you should both be speaking 100 percent of the time." I adhere to this standard for most class time-but the only way it can be managed is by giving up teacher control of the stage, and the best way to do that is by decentralizing the classroom.

Imagine a classroom in which students are broken up into four groups. One group of four to six students is actively working on research/homework, chatting occasionally but largely on task. The second group is peer-editing one another's essays. The third group is at a whiteboard drawing a graphic depicting the change in technology and strategies between World War I and World War II. The final group is seated around a small table with the teacher, discussing the unit's essential questions and devising new ones. Welcome to my 100 percent-100 percent classroom.

Brick-and-mortar schooling doesn't mean what it used to. Teachers no longer need to be sages, gatekeepers, and assembly line leaders. Instead, we can be coaches and tutors who not only guide our students toward content mastery but democratic community building. Of course, students will need training for this kind of group work as well. The Peeragogy Project and the Mazur-based peer-instruction blog Turn To Your Neighbor have ideas, resources, and helpful communities ready for your explorations.

Not surprisingly, a successful foray into blended learning resembles blended learning itself. The tinkering, messiness, and serendipitous, asynchronous, and engaging learning that you will experience while bending into the blend will mirror that of your students' learning.

To that point, let me make a final suggestion: Always capture the learning in your classroom via photo and video, and wherever possible, share your work online with parents and colleagues. The blended-learning environment is only suspect as long as it is an unknown equation. Show yourself and your stakeholders the math, and its benefits will reveal themselves.

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We all know the feeling of having our class finally approach cruising altitude-only to hear that our peers, administrators, and the Internet at large have just discovered the next best way of ensuring student success. For some educators, blended learning-that is, learning that combines face-to-face instruction with online work-is turbulence in their flight path.

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5 questions every PLC should consider SmartBlogs

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5 questions every PLC should consider SmartBlogs

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The worthwhile, monumental and ongoing challenge of ensuring that each of our students is learning has led to the widespread adoption of professional learning communities in schools. This is a good thing.

But I wonder if PLC design has too often ignored an essential aspect of teacher growth: real, authentic professional learning.

After all, the commonly accepted practice for most PLCs is for teams to work collaboratively in cycles of inquiry and action research in order to improve student learning. PLC teams collect data on student learning, then make adjustments, create interventions and hatch new instructional plans. When the collaboration is efficient, PLC cycles provide a focused method to dissect student work and hopefully improve results.

Given that U.S. teachers have significantly less time to collaborate with peers than teachers in more high-performing nations, it makes sense to try and be efficient with PLC time, and I do want to impact student learning in a meaningful way. Yet can student learning experiences be enhanced in thoughtful ways if PLC structures and activities don't also promote -- and give time for -- teacher learning and intellectual growth?

I'm not sure.

I challenge teachers and administrators to ask themselves the following questions about how embedded collaboration time is currently utilized:

Are PLC protocols rigidly defined in your school? At what benefit and what cost?

Are PLCs in your school conducive to intellectual discovery and curiosity?

Do PLCs incorporate book studies, webinars and other forms of potential learning?

Do your PLCs encourage exploration and engagement with online professional learning networks or other platforms to connect passionate educators around your district, state and the world?

Does your PLC believe that teacher learning translates into student learning?

Some may argue that addressing -- and acting -- on the above questions detracts from focused work on student achievement. But this stance reflects a far too narrow vision of student and professional learning. If teachers aren't encouraged, and given the time, to be learners themselves, we are hardly supporting the worthwhile goal of schools being exemplary learning communities for all, or, for that matter, cultivating teaching staffs that can constantly model for kids what it means to be a lifelong learner.

Every Tuesday after school, instead of regular faculty meetings, our school has mandated PLC meetings. Again, it's a good thing that our principal recognizes the need and promise of collegial collaboration. Our PLCs are broken down by content area, and I'm part of the English III team. We function fairly well most of the time, using our time coordinating lesson pacing, breaking down common assessments and completing administrative tasks.

But when I go home and read, write, think, Tweet and collaborate in online spaces like the Center for Teaching Quality's Collaboratory, I'm fulfilling the inexplicable vacuum of teacher learning in schools. It's this intellectual and collaborative work I do in my livingroom in the evenings or at the local coffee shop on Saturday mornings that has impacted student learning in ways that traditional PLC structures never could, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Paul Barnwell (@MindfulStew) teaches English and digital media at Fern Creek Traditional High School in Louisville, Ky. Paul was a SmartBlog on Education Editor's Choice Content Award winner in April. Listen to an interview with Paul on EduTalk Radio.
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The worthwhile, monumental and ongoing challenge of ensuring that each of our students is learning has led to the widespread adoption of professional learning communities in schools. This is a good thing. But I wonder if PLC design has too often ignored an essential aspect of teacher growth: real, authentic professional learning.

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Student Discovery Sets - For Teachers (Library of Congress)

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Student Discovery Sets - For Teachers (Library of Congress)

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Student Discovery Sets - For Teachers (Library of Congress)

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The new Library of Congress Student Discovery Sets bring together historical artifacts and one-of-a-kind documents on a wide range of topics, from history to science to literature.

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Is Coding the Real 'T' in STEM? | MiddleWeb

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Is Coding the Real 'T' in STEM? | MiddleWeb

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A MiddleWeb Blog

According to the generally accepted definition of K-12 STEM, the subjects in the STEM acronym are integrated and applied during lessons - not taught in silos.

Integrating Math and Science using the Engineering design process is the usual focus. But I'm still mulling over the T, or technology. How are we integrating technology into the STEM mix? First, think about a few ways we currently use technology within integrated STEM.

1. In STEM challenges, kids design products to solve real problems. Technology is anything made by humans to satisfy a need or solve a problem. By definition, then, a product kids design during a STEM challenge is a technology.

2. Many STEM lessons involve kids in using equipment such as electronic balances and monitoring equipment, along with a variety of science equipment and digital math tools, and all can be considered technologies.

3. Some STEM lessons bring in technology by using computers as tools for researching the problem - an important step in the engineering design process.

4. Education websites such as BrainPOP provide engaging games to involve kids in STEM learning. For example, when I recently worked with kids on a roller coaster project, this teaching game helped them understand/review potential and kinetic energy.

5. Technology projects can actually drive integrated STEM projects. For example, the Air Force Collaboratory is a unique program that I find compelling because of its real life digital scenarios as well as its requirements for hands-on science and math.

Those are a few ways we integrate technology in STEM challenges today, but a new and rapidly emerging K-12 phenomenon is surfacing that may technology full membership in the STEM acronym.

Coding: the new technology on the block

Perhaps you're familiar with computer code - a sequence of signals used to give instructions to a computer. I've known about coding for a long time - sort of. At least I know that something makes things happen on my computer screen when I move my cursor.

I have a son who learned to code at age 6 in a Saturday class for young children at the University of South Alabama. That was over 30 years ago. I recently asked him how learning coding had helped him in school. He told me that coding forced him to break down a problem and think through it logically. To code effectively, he learned to chunk a problem into smaller bits and reduce it to a more manageable status.

Interestingly, coding also helped my son learn mathematics and physics because it helped him visualize problems and think about them less abstractly. He remarked, "I couldn't do the work I'm doing now [computer simulation] without visualizing what I'm doing, and for me, coding made that possible."

That glowing testimonial, coupled with my personal lack of any real knowledge about coding, prompted me to turn to one of my favorite teacher techies - Emily Vickery. Emily has recently written about coding a couple of times on her blog, Running the Digital River of Learning, in recent months. (She'll be publishing an article here at MiddleWeb soon as well, about coding and the digital learning gap.)

I urged Emily to tell me how and why coding might be used in STEM lessons. Here - in a nutshell (because I'm running out of space) - is a synopsis of some possibilities we brainstormed.

► Coding is just plain fun. It gives kids insight into the inner workings of technology and how it can be used to solve problems. It can add interest to STEM and expand kids' options as they think about ways to solve problems.

► Simple programs such as Scratch (a free coding program for kids developed by Mitch Resnick at MIT) can teach computational thinking and math and science concepts, such as motion, slope, and boiling point. So STEM lessons that use those concepts might use coding as a part of the research phase of the engineering design process ( EDP).

► Kids can use coding to construct games such as guessing games. Using coding, they might design a game that will help them evaluate whether the product they constructed meets the established criteria.

► Coding programs sometimes focus on art and music projects - and this has real possibilities for building STEAM programs.

► Coding can be used to create stories. Maybe these stories could be used to set up compelling scenarios that grab kids and lead them into the engineering challenge. (See this interesting post by MiddleWeb blogger Kevin Hodgson: "Why Coding Is Important in Our Writing Class".)

► Coding programs can change and control the speed of objects. Maybe this could complement STEM challenges involving vehicles and motion.

► When students do activities like debugging code they've written or finding more "elegant" ways to write code efficiently, it seems to us that they are deepening the kind of "engineering" thinking that STEM seeks to promote. This kind of mind work is very much a part of the design process as we test and tinker with our code and test again.

► Coding can be used to create advertisements. Students might use coding to create a description or even a marketing strategy for a product they created. This would be one way they might address the "Communicate" step of the engineering design process.

► Teachers use coding programs such as Alice to develop lesson plans. The lesson plans already developed for grades 6-8 cover a wide range of math topics. Some of these topics (rate of change and slope, volume, bouncing balls) are directly related to math concepts students need in STEM projects. These math concepts could be purposefully coordinated with STEM projects in which students need to apply those skills.

► According to Judith Gal-Ezer in The Economist, coding requires computational thinking - the ability to formulate problems in such a way that they can be tackled by computers. Perhaps coding can help kids formulate some STEM problems in such a way that they can use computers to engineer solutions.

The future of coding and STEM

Adam Enbar in The Wall Street Journal asserts that "we're entering a world where every job, if not already, will be technical." All graduates won't need to be computer programmers, but they should be technically conversant. What does that say about the direction of our STEM programs? Are we putting enough focus on the T in STEM?

Coding as a part of our basic curriculum is still in the early stages. Teachers and curriculum designers don't yet have all the pedagogical knowledge they need to guide them. Effective use of coding will require teachers who know what they are doing and understand how to use coding in their subjects - including STEM.

I make no claims to being a tech guru and I wonder - what have I left out in terms of how technology (including coding) can be better integrated into STEM? If nothing else, answering that question might generate a list of ideas for those who are teaching our STEM kids.

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A MiddleWeb Blog According to the generally accepted definition of K-12 STEM, the subjects in the STEM acronym are integrated and applied during lessons - not taught in silos. Integrating Math and Science using the Engineering design process is the usual focus. But I'm still mulling over the T, or technology.

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