My classroom was like an old western movie. I often thought of myself as a “white hat” and there were times when I certainly went “cowboy” after some new technology, literature set, you name it I probably started a shoot-out over it. So when I try to gather compelling course content around Blended Learning – I ask myself – have I turned from Pioneer to Settler?
Remind Me, Blended Learning?
The term Blended Learning, a concept which has needed definition since starting my current job almost ten years ago, has undergone many revisions. The simplest way to think about blended learning is to imagine a single classroom and remove the walls and meeting times. The best definition of blended learning includes the (2007) guidance by previously Sloan Consortium of between 30%-79% of content available online and the factors of Path, Place, Time, Pace identified by The Christensen Institute.
Who is Turning from Pioneer to Settler?
Some educators give up decisions about online content to software companies, with their canned, adaptive content. Teachers, or schools, or districts are judging the completeness and or the automaticity as the deciding factor are giving away the content teachers use as a medium between student and teacher.
And while achieving some aspects of the definition of blended learning, it does not likely preserve the classroom culture. And without a feeling of safety and belonging, what type of classroom is that anyway?
Some educators secede the decisions of learners to outside school vendors, weather is the state online school or online charter schools.
And it is easy. Easy to let a software make the decisions for us. But should we settle for that?
Stay a Pioneer
Instead of settling for the ideas of what vendors and software developers think our students should learn educators should still be pioneering variations of blended teaching and learning. The art of teaching that no company or program has replaced yet is the art of bringing together the students and the content well. The teacher has to decide what goes online and what stays face-to-face. There is no formula for what that is in each classroom, each classroom teacher has to make that choice based on the students s/he has and the content. Every year, the teacher always in control of those variables.
Stay a pioneer.
2017-03-07 at 1:50 pm
Well, old timer, you’ve been sleeping at the switch. The 3:10 to YouTeach left the station years ago. I would say that now, if you are not a settler on a development team or a guide on the side, you are a squatter because the pioneers moved on from Blended learning and online classes a long time ago. Where were you sleeping so many decades ago when people were developing educational software at the Institute for Learning Sciences in the late 1980’s? Those were the pioneers!
You might be able to keep your job if you skidaddle on over to Socratic Arts and the home page of Dr. Roger Schank, pronto.
Engines for Educators
https://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/intro-zoomer.html
Educational Technology: The Promise and The Myth Roger C. Schank
https://gsbblogs.uct.ac.za/walterbaets/files/2009/09/Vial.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjhgdHWhMXSAhWp7IMKHSXBBcsQFggrMAE&usg=AFQjCNF3BvHZ5HwOQeepeAhlaPNiVftMFQ&sig2=TpnXiBxCs33S1S9AiyRNKQ
Engines for Education Website
https://www.engines4ed.org
Socratic Arts
https://www.socraticarts.com
Roger Schank
https://www.rogerschank.com
https://learningonlineinfo.org/engines-for-education-learning-by-doing/
https://www.rogerschank.com/build-an-online-course-in-our-GBS-tool-for-free
2017-03-07 at 5:39 pm
Well partner, I like your style! 😉
Thank you for sharing these links – they are all excellent reads. I was inspired to learn of Dr. Schank’s obvious passion for creating authentic learning environments. He is my next follow on Twitter (@rogerschank).
I think we overlap on a few thoughts, but I do not think removing teachers from classrooms is beneficial. Teachers bring compassion and the human filter to classrooms. In many classrooms they are the most important and caring adults some children know. Teachers provide “just in time learning” at the center of a Venn Diagram of social, emotional, and academic learning.
And until all educators in a school building or a school district are on the same page and there is no danger of mis-spending – no one should be investing in these overly-expensive softwares. What we are seeing as the current ‘credit recovery’ courses are just cramming for short-term tests. Yet the programs are expensive because of the automaticity and the promise of fewer highly qualified teachers to administer those recovered credits. Most educational leaders are not yet qualified to select quality online curriculum. And when educational leaders do so anyway they often make hugely expensive errors. I would love a discussion at each school of the range of non-negotiables as to what does/does not go online for: districts, schools, grade levels, subjects, teams, and down to the level of each teacher.
That is why the best place for K-12 implementation of Blended Learning should be in each individual classroom, by the teacher of that classroom.
There is an art to teaching, not content delivery, but teaching another human being that I choose not to risk losing.
For me, an informed decision by a teacher of what to offer asynchronously versus face-to-face is my non-negotiable.
I thank you for an afternoon peppered with excellent reading though *bend of the brim of my hat to you*!
2017-03-07 at 5:14 pm
You know you have a clever post when it elicits a snappy rejoinder like the one above. I Enjoyed both!
2019-02-22 at 1:41 am
The art of teaching that no company or program has replaced yet is the art of bringing together the students and the content well. However, education is becoming a business and we can see different programs as business plans.
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