What Do You Mean This Isn't Blended Learning???

image from 123RF

Have you ever heard this… “We use the computers a lot so we are already doing blended learning.”  You and I both know that there is more to blended learning than just adding some computers to the
mix or we would have been doing blended learning back in the 1980s every time we played Oregon Trail on the one and only computer in the back of the classroom, right?

Blended learning is not about technology.  It’s a meta-strategy used to help personalize the learning for all students.  Really the reason that computers need to be brought into the mix is because 1 teacher in a room with 30 kids can’t do it alone.  The computer becomes a way for the teacher to multiply his/herself in order to work with students in smaller groups or even 1-to-1.  Now, let’s not get carried away to the other extreme and decide that blended learning is putting a student on a software program and letting them learn completely online.  This has a name, but that name is not blended learning.  This becomes either enriched virtual or full on virtual learning.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not bad-mouthing this type of learning. There are situations where this is necessary and works well. But we're talking about blended learning in your regular old 21^st century classroom.

Let’s dig in and take a look at blended learning vs. tech integration.  Tech integration is great and can be very useful and engaging in the classroom.  One useful example of tech integration is by providing students with an online test or quiz. This is helpful because it can help you get grades done either instantly or more quickly and students can get feedback much quicker.  If I did this at the end of a unit for a summative grade, then this is just tech integration.  It was useful, but it didn’t meet any of the criteria for blended learning.  

So, let’s look at our blended learning image again and think about how we can use this same example in a blended learning model.  First, I need data.  That’s easy.  I will have data readily available after the students take the test or quiz.  Then I need to take that a step further and use that data to guide flexibility in pace, place, path or time to personalize the learning.  So, how can I change the scenario to meet this expectation? I could switch up my summative test and make it a pre-assessment to provide starting point data. Now I can use this data to guide how I group students and how I offer flexibility to each group. Maybe a group that is really struggling needs to spend more time with me, the teacher, to get more direct instruction.  Others who have a stronger foundation in the new unit might be successful with a teacher-made video that they can watch then get started on their activity.  Others might not even need a video, but instead they may need some other options that challenge them.  By incorporating the use of technology, I am able to multiply myself as a teacher and meet the needs of more students at one time.

image from 123RF

Now I bet you are wondering, what is the magic formula to know that a lesson is blended and not tech integration. There isn't a magic formula, but you can definitely ask some questions about the lesson using the image above as a guide.  First, are you using some type of data to drive decisions on students needs, groups and activities?  Second, how are you offering flexibility in pace, place, path or time?

Let's look at another example and use these questions to guide our decision.  I set up 3 stations that my students will rotate through.  Station 1 is a video with questions.  Station 2 is a computer simulation game.  Station 3 is a worksheet to practice the concepts.  I will be walking around and answering questions.  Is this blended learning?  Well, let's take a look.  Did I use any type of data to inform my groups or the work each group is doing?  When looking at this scenario, I don't see any data being used.  Already I can tell that this is not blended learning because I did not use data, but let's look a the next question just for fun.  Did I offer any flexibility in the stations based on the data?  Again the answer is no.  All the students are doing the same 3 stations just in a different order.  This is not flexibility.  There is no purpose or reason for the stations other than having students working together in groups as they complete the tasks.

When creating blended learning lessons, just remember to keep these questions at the forefront of your mind and you'll have a great way to gauge if your lesson is tech integration or blended learning!

How to Become A Man (or Woman) With a Plan

     I know what many of you are thinking... All this theory and explanation is great, but seriously just give me a lesson plan template to fill in and I'll be on my way.  It's okay, you can admit it.  I'm a realist.  This is what we kept hearing from teachers, so Charles and I both researched different templates for blended learning, but let me just tell you, the results were not good.  They looked like a regular lesson plan and included things such as objectives, digital tools used, in-person components, etc.  The problem is that it was just a list of items going down the page.  Blended learning is not a linear list.  It's fluid and sometimes circular, sometimes not.  Sometimes it heads in a million different directions and sometimes it all converges into one.
     In our quest to make all of our teachers happy, we continued looking for the perfect way to lesson plan.  One day Charles came upon the image to the right that can be found at this link.  We shared this image with one of our administrator groups about a year ago and got good feedback.  We realized that showing these icons helped them to understand what blended learning could look like and also to make the connection that it still uses pieces that we have always used such as assessment, small groups and independent work.
     We decided to take this idea to the next level and create icons that our teachers could use as hands-on pieces to see how their lessons transform from traditional at the beginning of the academy to blended by the end.  We created our own cards and added a few more icons so that teachers had some manipulatives to use.  You can access our cards, here.  These cards are used to plan different iterations of blended learning lessons as well as lessons done using different models.  Once you lay the cards out in the way that you want your blended learning lessons to look, then you can simply fill in the details that go along with each of the cards.  Let's look at a couple examples of lessons that teachers have mapped out using the cards in our academy. (More examples are included in the icon card file)

     As you can see in the images above, blended learning does not fit in linear boxes down a page.  So, if you want to be a man (or woman) with a plan for blended learning, then I suggest that you print out a set of our blended learning icon cards and start laying out your blended learning lesson.  If you want to try to create these blended learning maps digitally, try using this template that I created.

     Have fun planning and please be sure to tweet out a picture of your blended learning map to us! @MrsShawGTT and @Thrasymacus

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto: Relationships and Data in a Blended Learning Experience

There's a line in the song Mr. Roboto... 


🎶 The problem's plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to save our lives
Machines, de-humanize 🎶

Many of us, including myself, once derided cold data's "over use" because it seemed to dehumanize the student.  My son, Charlie, for example, is more than his STAAR score or IQ or whatever... Grades are incredibly subjective by nature, especially if you consider what gets weighted more and what gets weighted less.

Which is a TRUER indicator of student learning: homework grades, test grades, standardized tests, conversations, exit tickets???  Further, how do we weigh those assessments so that the final number is a true indicator of the student's actual understanding???  UGH!!!

But... the aforementioned data CAN help refine a process to help scaffold learning to push my son to achievement more than he is currently.  Data can help teachers create personalized learning experiences that create greater engagement and frame the learning.

Data is a tool for learning, not the goal of learning.

As you've read through these blog posts, we certainly hope that you've picked up on a concept that some supporters of blended learning under emphasize.  Namely, at the core of the personalized learning experience that blended learning affords is the duality that data tracking and conversations can inform and build relationships and relationships help guide student achievement via data analysis.

The benefits to implementing blended learning lessons, those that incorporate student/teacher analysis of data in order to personalize the learning experience via flexibility in pace, place, path, time are aplenty.  Did I just use the 1930's farmer term "aplenty" in a blended learning blog?  You betcha buttons I did!

Those benefits, which include higher student engagement on tasks, higher student achievement, further development of future ready skills, and so on, are rooted in how teachers prepare for student learning via breakdown of data.  The data, formative or summative, can take on the guise of exit tickets, quizzes, exams, discussions, and other assessments.  In our Blended Learning Academy, we work with teachers on the idea that none of their old quizzes or exams need to be thrown out when blended.  They simply need to be re-purposed.  The exam, for example, can now be used as both a pre-assessment and post-assessment to gauge growth in a blended lesson.

In one of our recent Blended Learning Academies for administrators, Shelly and I did an immersive activity.  Our participants were immersed in a blended lesson that focused on federalism.  We gave them a pre-test on the topic with 5 fairly basic questions.  Used the responses to group our participants.  Each group was then put at one of three stations.  Station 1 was with me, the government teacher where I would walk them through the concept of federalism, introduce relevant topics, and assess via high level questions all the way through.  Station 2 had participants researching five Supreme Court cases that dealt with federalism disputes between the state and national governments.  They were asked on an instruction card to look for patterns and talk about those patterns.  Station 3 had students discussing in small groups what a future federalism court case or issue might be.  They had to talk about the future possibilities and come to a consensus on the topic and how the Supreme Court might rule.

Each group's size was determined by the participants performance on the pre-assessment (the session average was a 65).  The participants who scored higher on the assessment were given more autonomy, the middle group had a scaffolded exercise to guide them, and the lower group was with me, the teacher.  We also rotated.  The first rotation was longer since I wanted to the lower scorers to stay with me a bit longer.  The second rotation was a little shorter. The third rotation was about as long as the second.

We then pulled the group back together after the rotations and had them take the post test.  The session average at that point was a 95 with the lowest grade being a 60 and the next lowest being an 80 and every else scoring a 100.

We then all debriefed, first, about federalism and the lessons we had learned.  Second, we talked about the station rotation model that we used and how it could be co-opted into a variety of classes and resource rich or poor circumstances.

All of these conversations were centered around the particular types of data we had collected.  Pre quiz, post quiz, conversations, peer to peer reflections, and even body language.

At the end of the day, participants stayed behind to talk and the conversations tended to gravitate to that lesson and how the data drove the experience and the experience was a social one where learning occurred at high level.  The participants were very friendly with me, the teacher, and we all felt social connections, but to be honest I didn't ask them at any point about their favorite color or food or where they grew up.  Our social bond presented itself as a tangent to the data break down and my scaffolding of their learning experience.  They learned something new and seemed exhilarated by the experience and felt a social connection to me... but that social connection was steeped in the content and data.  I hope that makes sense.

The data in essence gave the context to a rich learning experience that allowed us to bond over the discovery of surprising facts about federalism.

So in the blended learning environment, data is not an end in and of itself.  The data is used to personalize the learning experience for each student so that they can achieve greater heights in F2F and online modalities.  The two worlds blend better together when data informs what needs to be online and what needs to be face to face.  Relationships grow because student's dendrites are being excited by experiencing success that is hand crafted (by their own hands hopefully) especially for them.  The analysis of data answers the question how should I teach, what should I teach, what should go online, what should be small group, what should be whole group, and so on.

Me gusta data. 🤖❤️

To Flip or Not To Flip - Part 1

   

Image from 123rf

     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.

Engaging Online Assignments Not Another Brick In The Wall

The online pieces to your Blended Learning lessons should cary all the personality and excitement that your face to face pieces have.  Online learning portions shouldn't simply be another brick in the wall of a boring virtual structure (see what I did there?!).

One of the difficulties in designing blended learning experiences has to do with your attitude.

Maybe I should say, it has to do more with your personality and how you project that personality into a virtual or online environment.

Since helping to develop Region 11's Blended Learning Academy with Shelly Shaw and teaching some hybrid college government courses on the side, I have wrestled with the concept of portraying my dry, but lovable, personality online.

In a face to face environment, it's easy.  I just tell all of my old jokes always careful to keep timing in mind.  I read my audience to see how far I can take my sarcasm.  I insert analogies or metaphors for the concepts that need scaffolding.  I make sure my body language is supporting the atmosphere, whether it be serious or joking.  Etc, etc, etc.

In blended learning, however, you're not always there when the student is working on your assignment.  If you drop in a joke or sarcastic remark in an assignment like a discussion post, students will not hear your tone or see the body language that you might have been attempting to deliver.  Misunderstandings or, worse, missed punch lines may occur.

So we have a choice, either have a robotic online environment and risk disengaging students at home OR  find a way to convey our classroom culture and our personalities in a way that translates effectively online.

If you simply want to have a robotic online environment, stop here.  You have no need for the rest of this post.

Ok, glad they're gone.

Robotic online environments can be said to be 2D.  Flat might be another word.

In our efforts to create a deeper online experience, a 3D one, we have to really dig into our emotive experiences in the classroom and try to find ways to replicate those experiences online.  That is not to say that telling the same joke in the same way will suffice.

It means we have to find ways to design learning in a way that our personality traits might be felt or duplicated online to keep those emotional classroom connections alive.

For example, in my online discussion posts I want students to think deeply but not be threatened by the possibility of getting a "wrong" answer when they spend their time and energy on a discussion prompt.  To alleviate the tension, I look for meme's or videos that accentuate the questions prompt and ADD to the content as opposed to simply being static. unproductive, or passive side items.  I also ask opinion and value questions, but ask them to support their thinking with citations or other people who think the way they do.  There is NO right answer, but there is a right process.

When discussing federalism in my hybrid college course I ask students to dive into Federalist 51, the Federalism chapter in their textbook  and answer the question "Is federalism still relevant in today's world? Please support your opinion.".

In order to answer this question, students have to a) understand the concept of federalism b) understand what the Founders wrote about it in Federalist 51 c) understand how it works in today's world d) judge whether it is still a viable system.

That's pretty dry.

To import my personality, I don't tell a joke or a funny story.  I find a video that IMPLIES my sense of humor but also adds depth to the discussion post and the content.  In the following clip, I also ask students to explain what the clip has to do with the federalism prompt (answer: Mr. Burns is the US government and the bugs are the states... they are both selfish and interdependent which allows for a stable environment to exist, for the most part.  The door frame can be seen the US Constitution or Congress).

So the video conveys my humor, the content, and furthers the question prompt.

In many cases, asking students to make connections between their experiences and your content is good enough to carry your personality and make an assignment 3D.  Using analogies, metaphors, memes, jokes that lie within the scope of your content is the best place to start.  You can also use lensing activities in this same way.  For example, you can ask students "What would George Washington say if he were a part of this book... or listening to this conversation... or in charge of so and so?"

Creating opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding of content via interactions or reflections with you or peers is also useful.  For example, you can post a question in a Padlet and have students reply with images or videos that you leave comments on would be a great way to carry that classroom culture into the outside world.

Creating a hashtag for students to post Instagram images to would be a similar 3D experience as long as you are actively engaging with their artifacts at some point.

Even though it isn't directly your personality that is being projected, the above examples project THROUGH your personality and help develop a better online environment.  

Video Killed The Radio Star: The Buggles and Blended Learning

Sometimes small and innocuous changes in the way we do things leads to revolutions that aren't seen until they are directly on top of us.

Case in point... Go ahead, hit play and listen. :)

Especially the line "and now I understand the problems, you can see. I met your children, what did you tell them?"

  

When the Buggles, a name derivative from mixing the words bugs and The Beatles, released this video and MTv played it as their first ever video, the world was in the throws of change.  During the radio age, all that mattered was the voice and the music.  The Buggles, as implied in the album's name, "Age of Plastic," predicted that the advent of video and VCRs effectively killed the older radio stars.  Now, because of the advent of new technologies, a new generation of artists would synthesize music, technology, and aesthetics (note the oversized sunglasses are meant to portray a "bug's" eyes) to produce the NEW stars.  Stars like Madonna and Prince and stations like MTv and VH1 were now not only possible, but fated.

Video allowed the artist to fully flesh out their vision and music beyond lyrics and sounds.  Their thinking became visible.

Sure... Radio continued, but radio as the main and only medium through which music was sold and consumed was over. Eventually, MTv gave way to CDs, MP3s, and finally Spotify and Pandora.  The consumer's need for personalized access to music, when and where and how they wanted it, could not be ignored or denied.

Video killed the radio star and we ALL celebrated it.

In a very similar fashion, a better understanding of the brain, technology leaps, and the push for equity for ALL students has placed an unyielding amount of pressure on the old "sit and git" and "sage on the stage" way to teach.  I might argue that YouTube killed the old way to teach.

Notice, I did not use the word learn.  Students are learning under the old regime, but in a way that can be characterized as the "soft bigotry of low expectations" kind of way.  In "sit and git" classrooms, when students ARE inspired and excited to learn something new, unfortunately, they are likely self-medicating by turning to an instructor who personalizes their learning: YouTube.

There is a tension in many classrooms between the advancement of the personalization of learning happening all around us and the master of the content who still wants to lecture or show off what they learned about Texas History fro their 1980's college days.  In so many cases, Google and YouTube are better teachers in a fact based, low Bloom's environment.

Blended learning with its emphasis on flexibility, student empowerment, and a nod toward the outside-the-classroom world is the Buggles of today.  "Teaching" is now more about guiding students to not need us (empowerment), because in many cases they really don't need us.

In previous posts we talked about the umbrella visual's portrayal of flexibility in place, pace, path, and time as it is driven by data to create personalized learning experiences for students.  So what are the benefits?

Student Benefits:

• Ownership over their own learning goals
• Learning that happens inside and outside the classroom
• A greater reliance on peer to peer feedback and refinement practices
• An end to the view that the teacher is the "master" of the student's learning and success
• A stronger community fabric with peers and the teacher
• Greater ability to express their knowledge in a variety of ways to authentic audiences
• More retention because the learning is personally authentic 

Teacher Benefits:

• Students are better engaged and less discipline issues
• Students are afforded more leadership opportunities and are less of a discipline issue
• After the front loading of planning, more T.I.M.E.
• more time to guide
• more time to reflect
• more time to build relationships
• more time to become better at letting go
• more time seeing that investing trust in students pays off
• more time to evaluate because students are helping in the grading/evaluating
• Pride in helping to create independent learners
• Inspiration brought on by students who creatively display their knowledge
• Getting help from students in planning lessons and/or integrating technology
• A new way to breath life into old lessons
• Contributing to a skill set that will help small human beings grow up to be successful larger human beings
• Parents will see at home what you are doing in class and they will be thankful for the view

Like all things worth while, becoming a Blended Learning teacher takes time and effort.  Start off small, find what works for you and your students, and build around successes.

The difference between the song and the video Video Killed the Radio Star is a small tweak in delivery and an acknowledgment and incorporation of the new ways.  The Buggles became both radios stars and the harbingers of the demise of radio stars by moving in a new-ish direction.  They carried what worked in the old system and married it to the new system.  You can do the same and your students will thank you for it.