"Kids were laughing in my classes While I was scheming for the masses Who do you think you are? Dreaming 'bout being a big star"
Goals/dreams are always impossible and nearly invisible things that hang perpetually in our future. They wait. They're silent. They almost seem to run away from us. But goals and dreams, like mile markers on a highway, let us know where we are going and give context to whether we're headed in the "right" direction or not.
Uncertainty is this weird unmeasurable thing. It's empty and intimidating. Risk, however, is quantifying or taking a bite out of uncertainty.
Many of those new to blended learning will count, among the list of struggles, that there is uncertainty in trying out something new in the classroom. It's exciting, but also scary at the same time. But if you take a measurable step toward Blended Learning then you are controlling the risks involved with trying something new. You are giving form to uncertainty and, thereby, controlling it.
Change for the sake of change isn't a good idea most of the time. Change for the sake of benefitting your students? That's admirable. But change reveals new horizons and those new horizons show us potentially newer and better changes for our student's betterment.
Change is going to happen. The sometimes slow but always certain current of change has momentum…tremendous momentum. But it is dumb and unrefined momentum, like an undeniable ocean current. Yes, ocean currents can pull you out to the sea, but they can also be used to navigate that same sea in order to reach incredible destinations.
The calculating acts of shifting your sails or pushing the rudder a certain way are risks that help navigate through uncertainty.
The trick in being a teacher is to see the questions their adult selves will ask & address them in the here and now. I would then base my calculated risks in class based on both my student's real needs and what I imagined their future selves might ask of me.
Change is happening and you can’t stop it…so lean into change by taking a risk. Let calculated risks help you, your students, & America's Future (patriotic music and eagle noise in background)!
Here's a slide I like to use in our Blended Learning Academy. It's one example for how to take baby steps toward blended learning.
Start becoming a Blended Learning teacher by including elements of Blended Learning, even if they are only parts and pieces. If you use a timer, for example, you will be teaching your students time management skills which are crucial in blended learning environments.
Let your students laugh in your classes, let them scheme for the masses... let them dream about being big stars by building lessons for learning instead of lessons for teaching. The choice to be afraid to try new things hurts your special populations and economically disadvantaged more than main streamed students because personalized learning via blended learning is that "rising tide that lifts all boats". Main stream students are more likely to have support at home, have a diverse background of experiences (ie. vacations, exposure to adults with a variety of career paths, etc.). In short, focus on build lessons for learning instead of lessons for teaching via the blended learning lens.
If you can't do it in one lesson then incorporate lesson add-ins like timers, stations, student data folders and so on.
When you hear about blended learning, often times people just assume its for high school and college. But if we think about the goals of blended learning, to personalize learning using data to
provide flexibility in pace, place, path and time, then we realize that blended learning is good for all students including elementary students. One thing that can help make blended learning successful at the younger grade levels even down to kindergarten is having the right tools to make your students successful. Today I want to take a look at what I would rank as my top 3 tools for an elementary teacher to make blended learning successful in their classroom.
Home Base
I want to start out with what I consider to be the most important tool: A home base. If you don't have one consistent home base where kids and parents know that they can find everything posted, then things will just become a confusing mess.
There are so many different choices out there when it comes to a home base so it was pretty difficult to choose one, but I did settle on one because I believe it is the easiest to use for elementary students and has a lot of cool perks built in. My choice for a home base is Seesaw. You may not agree, but let me explain my choice and maybe you'll change your mind.
First, I love the sign in choices that Seesaw offers for students. Students as young as kindergarten can easily get logged in using a class code or a QR code. As students get older, the teacher can utilize the log in through an email address and password to get students used to logging in the traditional way. I think this is a great option and I'm sold just based on the log in options, but Seesaw didn't stop there.
One of the greatest and most popular features in Seesaw is the ability to assign activities to your students. You can create your own activities, but there is also a gigantic library of amazing activities that you can just grab and assign to your students. You can also edit pre-made activities to fit the needs of your students as well as create your own from scratch. When I've shown this feature to elementary teachers, it was a complete game changer for them.
Although activities are amazing, students also have the capability to create using the add to journal feature. Through this feature, students can take a photo or video, upload a file, add a link, draw, record audio, or type a note. These features in this easy to use format are an amazing addition for elementary students. In one click, students can take a photo and add it to their journal where they can annotate over it, type a caption and/or record audio. What's amazing is it took something that might otherwise require a bunch of app smashing and uploading and combined it all into one easy step that young students can easily master. Now teachers can have their students not just consume, but also create.
I could really go on and on, but let me just mention a couple more things that make Seesaw a great choice for elementary students. Most importantly, this tool is free which is always amazing. You also have the ability to add families so that parents can view their child's work. How awesome would that be to have them view student activities and creations and even hear their child's voice explaining their thinking. Another reason Seesaw is a great choice is their safety. They are complaint with both FERPA and COPPA. So you can rest assured knowing their your students are safe on Seesaw. For more information about Seesaw safety, check out their Privacy Center.
Data
You know from reading previous blogs and looking at our blended learning image above that data is super important to the blended learning process. Teachers must continually be collecting data from their students in order to guide their instruction so that they can personalize the learning to meet
student needs. There are many traditional ways to collect data such as exit tickets, activities, conferring with students, observation, quizzes and tests and many more. I think it is important to also have a digital tool that teachers can use to quickly gather data and provide analytics to guide their instruction. As I'm sure you all know, there are many, many tools out there that can quiz students and collect data. I've chosen one tool to recommend for elementary for its ease of use, visual appeal, available features and compliance with COPPA. For my data tool, I chose Quizizz.
Quizizz is a great choice for elementary students because it is very easy to get logged in. The students can simply go to the Quizizz site and use the teacher's code to join the game. Alternately, if the students have Google accounts, the teacher can set up a class and invite his/her students to join the class using a link and their Google login. Either way, the teacher is able to give quizzes and collect analytics.
Speaking of analytics, Quizizz has great analytics. You can look at the class analytics as a whole class which are also color coded for easy viewing. You can also view them by question and by student. If you have a class set up, you can also email the scores to parents once students complete a quiz. One other feature that I really like is that you can attach state standards to each question so that you also have analytics per standard.
I know that the biggest concern is about getting quizzes into your account. Rest easy. There are many ways to get your quizzes going. Before you do anything else, I would browse the library of quizzes that have been shared by other teachers and see if you can find something already created. Even if the quiz isn't exactly how you want it, you can make a copy and edit it to add your own questions or delete questions you don't like. This is by far the easiest and biggest time saver. If on the other hand, you want to create your own quiz from scratch, you can certainly do that too. When adding quiz questions, you can add text and/or images and there is even an equation editor built in. One last way that you can upload questions is by uploading a spreadsheet that contains your questions and answer choices. Once you have your quiz ready to go, you can either play the game live or give it to students as homework that can be completed in a station, at home or any time of day.
Sharing
When trying to decide what I would include as my third recommendation, I decided that having a universal way to share is important. My third tool is QRstuff.com. QRstuff.com is a super easy website that takes URLs and converts them to QR codes. I'm always surprised that when I share this tool how many people never knew how to create a QR code before. Not only is this tool easy to use, but it's free and you can even customize the color of your QR code. This is also a very reliable
website. It's been around for many, many years and it is the only one I use nowadays.
I guess you might be wondering why making QR codes would make my top 3 list. First, I just love QR codes! QR codes are such a great way to quickly share links with a variety of devices and people without having to have a home base or type in long URLs. All someone needs to scan your QR code is a camera app or QR reader app on their phone or tablet. If you use Chromebooks or laptops in your classroom, you can still use QR codes by installing a QR Code Reader Extension in the Chrome Browser. Once this extension is activated, students can use the built in webcam to read the QR codes. You can post QR codes in the hallway, send them to parents through email, post them at stations for students to use with iPads, and the list goes on and on.
Not It's Your Turn
It was hard to whittle down my tool choices to just 3 with the vast amount of tools available today, so let me know what other tools do you consider must haves in blended learning. Post a comment below to share your top choices.
Spider-Man, Into the Spider-verse is a wonderful little offshoot of the Marvel Universe. Miles Morales is bit by a crazy radioactive spider and sort of reluctantly becomes his universe's new Spider-Man after the original dies. (Those aren't really spoilers).
When this new teen hero comes of age in the movie, a song can be a herd in the background: What's up danger? The hero, Miles, comes to terms with the fact that a great power has been thrust upon him and he can't simply sit back and let other's take on challenges that are now his by right.
So the song, What's up danger, is indicative of that choice to meet "danger" head on instead of hoping that things just "turn out well". The line "What's up danger? Don't be a stranger" underpins Mile's decision to welcome the challenges that are inevitable. That's not to say he goes looking for danger unnecessarily, he simply doesn't shy away from challenges that present themselves as he works toward the common good.
In so many ways, teachers that invest themselves in other people's kids are heroes in the making. I use the term "in the making" because a hero's journey happens without a final arrival. Being a hero is an active journey, not a destination.
As educators, we will have a variety of students with a variety of needs who all want to take a variety of pathways in life to reach their various goals. It seems like a herculean task IF we assume that all of this variety must be owned and planned for ONLY by the individual teacher.
THAT IS THE OLD WAY OF TEACHING AND THINKING!
Your task is NOT to take on your student's present and future on your back and think and act for them. Your task is to develop learning experiences that allow for a multitude of expressions and growth on the part of your students.
You get bored when you go to PD that is cookie cutter and doesn't speak to who you are. So do your students! Variety, differentiation, and individualized learning are a moral imperative in education.
So how do we start this difficult and seemingly complex new calling in our classrooms?
Start small and celebrate the small victories. You can't know how to hit towering home runs until you understand the nuances of swinging your hips, not dropping your shoulder as you swing, the need for strong wrists, and keeping your eye on the ball. The small things add up to the big things.
The Hero's Journey
So, whether you are starting off with Blended Learning, Project Based Learning, or some other new fancy pants way to prepare for learning... you gotta start small, celebrate small, and progress incrementally.
As you an see in the image to the right in "The Hero's Journey" image, failure is part of the success. Odysseus, Hercules, and other great heroes of the past went through very similar trials and tribulations before their ascension. The journey, though, looks very similar to the many struggles we face and humans beings, demigods or not. The small victories add up to the big ones.
How to fail better
1) Break down large tasks into small tasks - the big stuff doesn't happen unless the small stuff happens. Focus on the small stuff first. Make sure it's in order. Make sure you complete small step #1 before worrying about or moving on to step #2, and so on... Small failures are learning opportunities.
2) Keep track of your victories - All habits were originally a choice. Keep track of your small choices and small victories. Act on the small victories repetitively until they become good habits. Document your past failures and how you overcame them.
3) Celebrate - Don't be afraid to "self promote". Students, parents, administrators are saying things about you (likely good things!). It wouldn't hurt to add your own voice to the chorus. Be your own PR director. Celebrate what you do well and send those celebrations out into the ether! Use instagram to give parents a window into your classroom. Join twitter chats and share your lessons. Join FB pages and ask for ideas to make your great lessons better. Read books. Celebrate your failures and lessons learned with others.
4) What's up danger? - When a baby begins to walk and then falls down, you don't see parents chastising and bemoaning the baby's "failure". We would NEVER learn to walk LOL. We support failing baby walkers until we are celebrating walking baby walkers. Meeting your "danger" head on. Get ahead of the curve. Anticipate your challenges. Don't fret. You WILL fail at some point. That's a given. What isn't a given is how you react. The hero will never arrive at their destination. The hero can only be a hero within the context of their journey and struggle. Be a hero for your students. Meet your challenges and struggle in front of them and continue your journey... preferably with a smile. Take on your failures head on and make them your friend.
5) Blended Learning - If your mindset is ready. NOW go reread our blog posts, attend our Blended Learning Academy sessions, read Blended Learning books... Fail for your students sake.
Let's dive back into the flipped classroom and see how it works with the last two components of our blended learning model.
When people think about the flipped classroom, they generally envision the teacher assigning one video for everyone in the class to watch at some point that night. Although there is nothing innately wrong with this, there are so many other possibilities to use flipped classroom as a way to offer flexible pathways. Let's take a look at one example. As the teacher, instead of giving my students one video to watch, I'm going to offer different options based on levels of readiness and preferred modalities. I'm going to offer 3 different learning levels. You could name them something like novice, intermediate and expert levels. At each level, you can offer students different ways to learn such as videos, articles, or even pages from the textbook. Then let the kids choose how they want to learn and at what level. Maybe I have no idea what a ratio is, so I start at the novice level and watch a video. After I finish the 3 minute introduction to ratios, I want to learn more so I move up to the intermediate level. This time I choose to read the corresponding pages in the textbook, and I can also watch the video if I want. I can choose to stop there or I can go on to the advanced level and become an expert in ratios. Meanwhile, another student already learned ratios previously, so they might start at the intermediate level watching a quick video for a quick refresher then move on to become an expert. Now students are able to choose their own learning path while the teacher works to support, reinforce and challenge students as they move through this journey.
Image from Meme Generator
Finally, let's dig in and look at how data really ties all of this together in the flipped classroom environment. I know what you might be thinking at this point. So, all my students are out watching videos and reading articles in class, out of class... all over the place. How will I ever know what's going on? This is where data comes in. Teachers still need to keep tabs on their kids to see if they are actually learning. Using available tools such as quizzes in your LMS and online sites such EdPuzzle or PlayPosit will allow you to continually gather data each day to see which students have mastered the concepts and which students have not. This is where all that free time you created for yourself comes into play. If you give students a quiz as part of their flipped learning experience, then you can check the quiz grades each day. This will guide you as you make decisions on who needs to meet with the teacher in a small group for reteaching on the concept and who can continue working at their own pace as they are progressing along nicely. One word of caution, make sure to find time to meet even just for a few minutes with all students so that you can continue to build relationships with everyone. The only difference is that what you do in the small group might look different. If I pull a group of student who performed poorly on today's quiz, then I will be working to find out where misconceptions lie and reteaching the concept. Then I might pull a group of students who scored very high on the quiz. With this group I would challenge their thinking, ask high level Bloom's questions to make them think critically and maybe even assign them a challenging task or problem to solve.
By combining all the elements of blended learning with flipped classroom experiences, you can offer students personalized learning experiences, establish better relationship through small group and individual interactions and not go home exhausted every night.
Let's face it. People either love the flipped classroom or they hate it. I'm right there with you. I was there trying out flipped right from the beginning. I went to all the sessions about it at EdCamps all over Texas. I learned all the "dos and don'ts" of how to do flipped such as make sure to quiz students over their flipped videos, punish those who don't watch, do activities in class, etc. Well, some things worked for me and some didn't and some I just flat out didn't agree with. Does this mean that I decided to throw the whole strategy out? No! I tried it out, some things worked and some things didn't, but I kept at it and tweaked as I went. There's no flipped classroom police that will arrest you if you don't follow all the "rules of flipped classroom." So, I did what worked for me.
You might be wondering why I'm even bringing up the flipped classroom in the first place. Well, flipped classroom is one of the models in blended learning and it can be a really great place to dive in to blended learning if you are just starting out; however, I've seen it done well and it gave students tons of flexibility and really allowed for personalized learning, and I've also seen it done poorly where there is no real benefit to the classroom. So, let's talk a little bit about how we can make flipped meaningful and beneficial to you and your students. Let's take a look at flipped learning through the blended learning lens. Using the blended learning graphic, we'll start out by looking at flexibility in time. The idea of flipped learning is that the teacher assigns a video to the students to watch at home before returning to class the next day. The video replaces typical lecture and the students are ready to jump right into activities where they can apply what they learned in the video. This seems like sort of a no-brainer when it comes to flexibility in time, right? Students can watch the video anytime they want after school, at night, or in the morning before school, so what's the problem? The biggest complaint that I hear about this set-up from teachers is what happens if my kids don't watch the video? What if they don't have internet access at home? Instead of letting these things become a problem that prevents you from trying out this model, let's think about how we can adapt to make this a win-win for everyone. Here's my argument. Flipped videos are supposed to be a maximum of 3-5 minutes long. We are not talking about hour long lecture videos. What if a student couldn't watch the video at home and they come to class? Why can't they just pick up a device and watch the video for 3 minutes? What's that you say? We can't allow students to do this. Then everyone will do this. Now, let me ask you this? Why is it so bad to give them the freedom to watch the video at home or in class? Is it going to completely ruin your class if some students take 3 minutes of class time to watch the video? I dare say no. I gave students this freedom and it became more like on-demand learning. Some students watched at home, some watched at the beginning of class and some watched at a later point in class when they needed the information. This became a wonderful set up that allowed students to access help and instruction when they needed it. They could watch a video more than once or even stop and start while they are working alongside the video. The best part for me as the teacher was that I was now freed up to help students who needed extra help either individually or in small groups. The years that I did this in my classroom were probably my favorite and I would say more students learned more that year than students in other years.
Image from Meme Generator
Now that we've got the time issue worked out, let's take a look at place. Offering students some sort of flipped experience, which by the way doesn't have to only be a video, gives students 24/7 access to learning. No longer is the learning confined to the classroom on a specific day at a specific time and if you miss it, then tough luck. Let's hope you never get sick! Now, students that are sick can still keep up with the lessons in class and you don't get bombarded with questions at the beginning of class such as did we do anything yesterday? Think about all the reasons students miss class - vacations, school sponsored activities, ISS, etc. Now if kids miss your class for any reason, they have the flipped experience to guide them in their learning rather than depending on you, the teacher.
Finally let's take a look at pace. Thinking back to every class I ever had, (and there were a lot of them) I had students that needed me to go faster in my teaching, those that needed me to go slower and those that liked my pace the way it was. I'm sure this is true for every teacher in America. If I'm standing in front of the classroom teaching a lesson to the whole group, there is only one of me. I can only go at one pace so I'm only meeting the needs of about 1/3 of my students. That means the other 2/3 of my students are either bored or lost and confused. By using the flipped classroom model, you can provide students with scaffolded lessons that they can access on their own when they need it. What if we are talking about prepositional phrases, but I'm confused because I don't remember what a preposition is. Now as a student, I can return back to a previous video or other learning experience about prepositions to refresh my memory, then I can return back to the current lesson. While there is usually only 1 teacher in a classroom, this becomes a problem if you are teaching everything whole group. But, if you are using the flipped model, students have many resources to help them learn what they need, essentially multiplying the teacher and also freeing that same teacher up to work with individuals that really need some one-on-one instruction and guidance to clear up confusion or further challenge them.
So far we've looked at 3 of the 5 components of blended learning in this blog post. Check back in next week when we look at flipped classroom can add flexibility to path as well as how we can continue to collect and use data to guide learning.
Change for the sake of change isn't a good idea most of the time. Change for the sake of benefitting your students? That's admirable. But change reveals new horizons and those new horizons show us potentially newer and better changes for our student's betterment. 
