Plenty of buzz exists about blended learning and its transformational potential. But what does blended learning really mean? In this course we will explore the different models of blended learning and dive into key issues that impact students, teachers, and schools. Specifically, we will look at these issues through the lens of three high-performing schools that each use a different type of blended learning. A few of the key topics will include: - The role of the student and how to support students in the transition from traditional to blended learning - Implications for teachers in their day-to-day work and overall role - Impact on the way schools are designed including staffing models, use of time, hardware/software selection, and the use of data - Implementation challenges, potential solutions, and the remaining open questions We will live by the attributes of blended learning in this course, encouraging students to take quizzes at the beginning of the module to assess their understanding and skip material they already know. Overall, we will take a hand-on approach and the course will culminate in participants prototyping their own blended learning model. If you are interested in learning more about how to best leverage technology in education and rethink the way we run schools, join this MOOC and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Become a part of this growing movement and learn first-hand how blended learning can help provide students a more personalized learning experience.
Four Types of Software
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Blended Learning: Personalizing Education for Students
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Making Hardware, Software, and Space Decisions
Explore the choices you have to make around your software, hardware, and facilities, and how to make sure they support your educational model.
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Brian GreenbergCEO
Silicon Schools Fund
Rob Schwartz
Michael Horn
When thinking about software,
it's helpful to think about the distinctions between four different types.
First, we have whole course software.
Next, we think of supplemental software that supports a core course.
The third would be teacher tools, and the final one would be learning apps.
>> When we think about whole course software,
we're talking about the software that can replace an existing course.
Think about a student taking biology 1 or world history online.
This is where the software does the majority of the learning work essentially
on its own.
And the teacher's job is to check in on student progress, monitor things.
But the majority of the learning is via the software.
>> So this is the sort of software that we're seeing a lot of flex-like
programs around the country.
From Carpe Diem, from its schools in Arizona and
Indianapolis, to a lot of the dropout recovery schools and
alternative schools that are popping up in school districts across the nation.
>> And some of the big companies in this space that we see schools using
are folks like Apex Learning, Edgenuity, K12.com, to name a couple.
And the big advantage here is that it's all there in one package.
The teacher's job isn't to pick resources and
align everything and make sure everything's perfect.
You hand a lot of the work over to the software.
And of course, the downside is it may not be as perfect as if the teacher's
actually curated and found everything on their own.
So a little easier to use and maybe a little less personalized for each student,
what they need.
>> A second category is supplemental software.
Supplemental software is that which really supports a core course but
it's not delivering the core instruction per se.
A teacher is still designing that experience or
delivering lessons in certain aspects, and so forth.
So think about our KIPP LA example, where they use a lot of supplemental software,
such as ST Math.
The teacher is still delivering core lectures, helping to group students and
deliver interventions, and then students are going off to the online software
to do various supplemental activities at various points.
>> And ST Math, along with DreamBox,
are two of the titles we've seen in a lot of the schools we've visited,
in this elementary and middle school for the topic of math.
ST Math is really nice because it's almost an entirely visual based way of
teaching math.
Students can start with a sort of numbers sense, back in kindergarten and
go all the way through more complicated algebra for middle school.
And each topic that a student gets is just a little bit harder than the topic
beforehand and kids are getting a lot of practice.
So, it's just as very iterative, intuitive way of students to learn and
it doesn't rely on them having to read anything,
very self-directed in their own learning process.
The other program that Bryan mentioned is DreamBox Learning,
and DreamBox uses a game based engine for a lot of its content.
But it's actually adaptive, and that's the real key part of it, which is that it
delivers problems to students that are generally just at their level, and
if they miss something, then it will level down and give them something easier, or
it they need more challenging problems based on their performance
then it will serve up harder and harder problems over time.
>> And we've put resources to both ST math and DreamBox in the resources section.
They have a couple nice little videos to have you get a feel for the program.
I'd highly encourage you to take a look,
because they actually tell their story nicely,
and it helps to really understand how these pieces of software work so you can
generalize to the broader sector of the way software can work in the classroom.
>> A third supplemental resource that a lot of people use and
are familiar with is the Khan Academy.
Now, the Khan Academy has gotten a legendary following for
its videos on an impressive array of topics that started with math.
But actually, what we find most impressive about Khan Academy has nothing to with its
videos, but this infinite set of practice problems that the Khan Academy provides
that allows students to continually practice and practice to actually show and
demonstrate mastery,
and then dive back into concepts if they're still not getting something.
So the Khan Academy is also a free resource, which is why we
see a lot of schools get their start into blended learning by demoing with Khan.
>> I joke. I call it the gateway drug into
blended learning.
And it makes sense that math is where so many people start, because math has
a relatively concrete set of steps that you're supposed to go to learn it,
and there's a discrete right and wrong answer.
And arguably it's gonna be a lot harder to design great software to teach philosophy,
but even in the English language arts,
we're seeing a lot of new titles come that people are finding a lot of benefit from.
There's a program that a lot of the schools we visited use called
Achieve 3000, which essentially takes current event topics and it writes
the same article at different levels of reading comprehension for the text.
So the whole class can be engaging in interesting learning and
conversations together, but students are reading at their just right reading level,
and then that can grow with them as their reading levels improve.
>> Another tool that our schools are using is Accelerated Reader.
In Accelerated Reader, schools create libraries of leveled content
at different lexile levels of different books.
And then basically what happens is that students read those different books
at their appropriate level.
After they've read the books, they take quizzes on Accelerated Reader,
where then they get the data inputted in the system where teachers can check
to make sure students are actually comprehending what they're reading,
and that they're at the right level.
From there then, basically, what Accelerated Reader does is create a really
cool virtual bookshelf that sort of looks like your books on iTunes,
where students can keep track of all the books that they've read.
And Accelerated Reader also keeps track of all the words that students
are reading as well.
>> When I was at navigator schools, a student was showing me her
Accelerated Reader bookshelf, and she was with pride showing me the books.
And I said wow, you've read all those books this year?
She looked at me and said no, that's this month, and then she
scrolled down showed me this incredible bookshelf of titles she had read.
And the pride that she had was really neat to watch, and
this is an example of where the software doesn't have to do everything, all right?
The act of just reading a book is arguably probably the most
important part of the learning process, we would imagine, in schools.
But the combination of a nice piece of software to ensure comprehension and
then to give the teacher data and
maybe motivate kids a little bit, makes it work so much more compellingly.
>> And we're also seeing some innovations in English language arts around the book,
itself.
So we're seeing companies pop up, like Gobstopper and
Light Sail, that are essentially trying to be the e-book for a lot of schools.
And what they're doing is taking these books and putting them into a digital
format, and then providing some intelligence around it.
So, the opportunity for teachers to embed videos or quizzes.
Just little notes to say hey,
did you pick up on this little passage, what do you think it means?
Ways to interact more and more deeply with their students.
A third category of tools really focuses on software tools that help schools
run better.
So, we're talking about teacher productivity tools,
meaning things that make teachers' lives easier, help you run the school better, or
help the basic administration in a school.
>> And there are just too many of these to cover in detail, but
we just want to give you a taste of a couple of the ways in which people
are thinking about using technology to do things that used to be done manually,
either better or more quickly for teachers.
>> So one example is edmodo, which is communications platform that a lot of
teachers around the world actually are using to communicate with students and
parents in a safe environment, post articles and other content on the platform
so people can access them, and use them in a variety of creative ways.
>> It's almost like Facebook for teachers, really.
Another example is a company called Class Dojo that's really working on a student
behavior system where they can give merits and demerit points for the kind of
behaviors a student the teacher wants more of or less of of the students.
And the kids get to keep track of their own data, and
they do it via these cute little monster avatars that they each get to have.
We mentioned Exit Ticket earlier, but basically,
in this tool, teachers can ask questions of students to check for understanding.
And students respond by whatever digital device is at their disposal.
And then teachers get a resulting poll map that basically
allows them to see how their class is understanding what they're going over.
Now, there are other tools like this as well, including Socrative and
Poll Everywhere.
>> There's also an important piece of software,
which would be the learning management system, or what we would call the LMS.
And this is really where schools and teachers are putting the assignments,
keeping track of the videos that they've recorded, storing students grades.
Actually in many ways this platform that you're seeing us in Coursera on is
essentially an LMS.
>> Now, this is a huge area with lots of players, so it would be too complex to
just give you a comprehensive list, but just to give you a flavor for
what these look like, we're seeing companies like Blackboard, Moodle,
which is an open-source version of it, we have Instructure with their Canvas system,
and even Edmodo in many classrooms is serving the purpose of an LMS.
>> And having a good LMS makes it so that schools don't just have to collect all
these resources and send them via email, or have a big Google doc.
It's just trying to create a holistic learning experience for
the students all in one place.
And lastly, there's the category of learning apps.
And the big difference here is really about how much time and for
how long of a period of time these are being used in a classroom setting.
So an app might show up for a couple of students when needed or for
this particular little unit, where something like DreamBox or ST Math,
you see that being used by the majority of the students for the length of year.
The other interesting thing about apps is, we're seeing parents use apps at
home a lot, to supplement what's happening in the classroom.
Now the caveat here is, there are a lot of apps.
And a typical teacher or parent would be very justified in just
throwing up their hands and saying, how the heck do I make sense of it?
So we wanna just show you three different apps that are worth just glancing at,
not because we endorse them, but because they'll give
you a taste of the different sized problems that apps are trying to tackle.
>> So you can find these just by searching in your app store for
these different terms, but we'll start with Motion Math, which is one for
math that basically teaches basic numeracy skills for students at a younger age.
The second one that we'd encourage you to take a look at is Duck, Duck, Moose.
And this is really focused on early literacy skills for younger students.
And the final one, just because it's fun, is Poetry, which just takes old-fashioned
poems and makes it a lot easier to search and display on your mobile phones.
Now, if you're interested in learning more about how apps fit into the marketplace,
our friends at the New Schools Venture Fund actually created a really nice
map of the ed tech space.
And we'll have a pop-up quiz that has the link there in a moment, but go and
take a look at how they segment the market and then some of the big
players that are in the whole school class space, the app space.
It's really a nice tool to get an overview.
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