How Can You Be the Oprah of Public Education: Mission Possible

 Mission Impossible     

We all have the same mission, right?  We are all trying to do the best job that we can educating our students.  Do you ever feel like our mission is Mission Impossible?  There are so many barriers that stand in our way or make the playing field uneven for our students.  Let's look at one specific example of this - Digital Inequity.
     This blog is all about trying to provide a personalized learning experience using data through blended learning, but I know some of you out there are thinking, "This would be great, but my students just don't have adequate digital access to do that."  It is definitely a reality that there are many schools out there that have 1-to-1 technology and students have all the access in the world while there are many other schools that have little access to devices or the devices they have are old or both.  Does that ring true with you?  Just because you didn't hit the technology jackpot doesn't mean you can't offer your students personalized learning experiences through blended learning.  We just need to be more creative about how we do that.  Let's take a look at a few ways that we can offer equitable access to our students with limited access to devices.  Kinda seems like an oxymoron, right?

Station Rotation

     There are many different variations of using the station rotation model, so there is probably one that will work for you.   If you have a computer lab in your school, then I would employ a modified version of the lab rotation model where you plan out a whole class period in the lab on computers.  All students would have access at the same time.  Since you will have limited time in the lab, then I would plan something that gives me the most bang for my buck - something that includes critical thinking, collaboration and creation.
     If you only have access to devices in your room, but maybe you can only get 1 at a time or a few at a time, then this is the perfect scenario for a more traditional type station rotation.  This could include 3-4 stations.  One station could have technology, one station would be non-technology and the third station would be a meet with the teacher station.  I've seen classrooms using this model with only 1 device at the technology station.  A great activity to do at this station would be to have the students collaborate and create a product based on their learning.  This would be hands-on and will help to get all students at the station involved.
     If you have several devices, I would still utilize this station rotation model, but you would have more freedom to give students individual work to complete and/or collaborative group work at the technology station.  If you want to learn more about the station rotation model, check back in the upcoming weeks when we'll have a new blog post devoted to the station rotation model.

Partnerships     

     Another option to help get your students the access they deserve is to create partnerships around the school and within your community.  I always made a point of becoming good friends with the librarian at my school for a couple reasons.  First, they were always able to help me out with great resources such as books, videos, online databases and research tips for my students.  Second, most libraries have computers in them.  This is a great person to create a partnership with because you can often work out times that you can send small groups of students to the library to work on blended classroom, stations or projects.  Through this partnership, you just gave yourself instant access to more devices and another adult.
     The librarian isn't the only partnership that you can create.  Often times there are teachers who have devices in their classrooms but don't use them at all or at least not part of the day.  Work with others and create a plan for a trade-off.  For example, you use their devices on Monday and they can use yours on Tuesday.
     Another way to get access to more devices is to create partnerships within the community.  Have a device drive.  Often people in the community have old cell phones, tablets and laptops that they would be willing to donate.  Put the call out within the community, through Facebook, Twitter and newsletters.

Grants    

     Finally, look for opportunities to apply for grants for devices.  Many districts now have local district foundations that offer teacher grant opportunities.  This is a great opportunity to apply for money for additional devices for your classroom.  Another organization that I've seen many schools utilize to buy devices in the PTA.  If you can get the PTA on board with the goal of providing equitable access for all the students at your school, they can be a great partner to work with to make this mission possible.  One other way that I've seen many teachers have great success is by posting projects on Donors Choose.  I know some teachers that have gotten at least 10 projects funded through Donors Choose.  I think one of the ways to be successful with them is to really do a good job of sharing out your project through social media so that it gets exposure.

Check out this blog post for more grant ideas.

Flipped Classroom

     One last consideration to think about is the flipped classroom.  Many teachers give up on the idea of the flipped classroom because their students don't have internet access or devices at home.  Is that really fair to our students to just throw away the whole idea of using technology because they don't all have access at home.  School should be the place where we help to even out the playing field and give all students the same advantages.  Let me challenge you to think about the flipped classroom in a different way.  What if instead, your flipped classroom videos or online activities switched from being homework to being just in time learning.  What if you used the blended portion of flipped to allow students to work at their own pace in your classroom with school devices and school internet access.  Now your classroom could become a fluid place of learning where students are all getting a personalized learning experience.  To read more about the flipped classroom experience, check out my blog post titled To Flip or Not To Flip.

Mission Possible    

     Even though it often feels like trying to get digital access for our students is often mission
impossible, with a little creativity and persistence, you can become the Oprah of educational technology at your campus and turn your mission impossible into mission possible!

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