Blended Learning in your district

[Anne Thorp, PhD]

Does your district support blended learning yet? This may be in the form of a combination of online and face to face sessions or even using online materials to supplement and support classroom learning.

[Laurie Korte]

Yes! Any way I can dream up.
Laurie

[Chris Ozias]

Is it supported or is it used...? :-)
We've been working with interested teachers over the last few years on incorporating moodle into their classroom practice. In my building I'm starting to see an increase in interest, especially with my 6th grade teachers. Moodle is starting to attain enough "mind share" that teachers are starting to consciously think of it as another tool in their kit when planning lessons (emphasis on "starting to").

[Anne Thorp, PhD]

Excellent Chris, the use of blended learning in the classroom is growing. LearnPort has a course called "Integrating Blended Instruction into Your Classroom" - it is a free course, four weeks long. The next open course starts in August and there will be more offered in the fall. If you have any teachers interested, please send them to LearnPort to sign up.

Anyone interested in blended learning are more than welcome to join us here, too ~ invite away!

[Ron Houtman]

Within the Kent Career Technical Center , most of the instructors in our 'E-Wing' use the blended learning model quite extensively. These programs include Information Technology, Certified Business Technology, Electronic Accounting, Banking, and Graphic Arts. Many of the other programs use our CMS (Blackboard) as well - but the largest adoption by our instructors is where we have 1:1 computing (in the above programs).

Many of our instructors now use Bb as their 'teaching platform'. That is to say, almost all of their course content is on the CMS, and with some instructors, the entirety of the coursework is online.

An interesting thought I had this past week when so many schools closed was: What if many of the teachers in those schools had a contingency plan, access to Moodle or Bb, and had some of their course content online. Students could still be learning, and school could go on as 'semi-normal'.

Yes, we always run into "but what about those who don't have Internet access...." - and my answer is that's true... but instead of reaching no one, we are reaching someone.

Great topic Dr. Anne :) - thanks for posting it!

[Jeff Johnson]

Not yet (my district is K-8) but I would like to see the 7th and 8th grade curricula start to include some online components.

[Susan Hardin]

We're just getting started with a blended instruction model for one of our professional development programs. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm assuming some of the same principles apply?

[Miriam Taylor]

Susan,
Yes most of the same principles apply although I've found I also have to think about adult learning principles.
One of the things that I have to allow more time for is the learning curve for the online site (whether I'm using a CMS like Moodle or a blog, wiki etc.) I have to provide more support, keep things simpler and allow more time to get everyone up and running. On the flip side, I find I get better thought and substantive comments from my teachers online if I make sure the materials are helpful and the questions I ask are of interest to what they are doing in their class everyday. One other thing, the administrator running the PD has to be heavily involved online. Building a professional learning community online takes time and if the teachers perceive it's not really important they won't participate. However, if they view it as a place they can get real answers and network with other teachers it becomes very exciting.

[Frank Miracola]

Hey Anne,

I am very excited to share with you that Carolyn McCarthy, Dr. Jennifer Parker-Moore, Mellissa White, and I are actually getting ready to launch a new project that will incorporate blended learning quite a bit. Teachers will have the ability to learn in a variety of ways. There will be live online sessions, archived sessions, video tutorials and even in-person trainings. Each participant will be able to choose the method that best suits their learning and life style. Depending on each participant’s needs they may earn SBCEU’s, grad credit or they may just participate to further their own professional development. We are calling the project 21things for the 21st Century Educator. Ours at the MISD starts on May 20th. We are very excited and hope to learn much from this first session. We plan on tweaking it as we go and working to make it better for each offering.

[Anne Thorp, PhD]

Ooooh, I want to know more! Where can I sign up?

[Frank Miracola]

Anne, here is the link to our site: http://21things.weebly.com/

[Toula Jacobson]

Frank, what a great project! Can it be used as a self-paced course for teachers to complete on their own if they want?

[Frank Miracola]

Hi Toula,

At our MISD for those who are taking it for SBCEU's I believe they have either 10-12 weeks to complete it. This has been a concept in the making for about two years now. We were floating an idea called the baseline, things every teacher should know. That had no SBCEU's attached to it and teachers would be totally self-paced. With this project you can do that as well however, there is nothing you would send us or complete. It might be something we add for the start of the second round. Offer a certificate of completion type of thing. For now we don't have that option but I like the idea.