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.
Choosing Software
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來自 New Teacher Center 的課程
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
So, a lot of schools want to always know, how do
I pick the best software for my Blended Learning Model?
And the problem with that question is that it's
just not as simple as just recommending you a
Thai restaurant or the best steak joint, where I
know we have similar taste and therefore it'll work out.
Reality is that in different circumstances,
different software works better and it
just depends on what you're trying to do and with what students.
So, what we thought we would do instead is share with you really the process that
the Blended Learning schools that we've observed are using to pick that software.
And therefore, you won't be at the mercy of just another
recommendation when you're trying to pick out the software in the future.
But instead you can go through this process to
navigate your way to something that really works for you.
>> And then secondly, we're going to refer you
to the Yelps or the Consumer Reports of the
EdTech Space, some new companies that are coming along
to provide resources to help you in evaluating software.
>> When I,
when I see teachers getting started I say what do you already have?
Schools, school districts, are notorious for already having
subscriptions to all sorts of softwares, or web-based programs.
And so I encourage folks to do, do some digging, find out what you already have.
Find out what problem that company says that pro, program solves.
You know, what do they say it's supposed to do for you.
And if you have that problem, try their solution.
Because you're already probably paying for it anyway.
if it doesn't work that's fine, we can move on
to the next thing, but start with what you already have.
And most schools are not a blank slate.
>> I know a teacher who used to really like the leap frog devices and software.
And when he became a principal, he didn't
have money to put this into his new school.
So this guy was a pretty crafty principal, as most good principals are.
He ended up calling
the district shipping and receiving yard, which is was like in the dark corner
of this district and finding somebody he knew on the other end of the line.
He said, hey do you guys have any of those boxes with the green frog face on it?
And the guy said, yeah, I've got pallets of that stuff, why?
I said, can you bring that over to my school, and literally
the next day, he had three pallets dropped on his campus, which
might have been $50,000 worth of software devices, and he got it
for free because it was already sitting in the district not being used.
>> So, Greg's advice
is clearly good advice.
Figure out what is free out there, what you already have to Brian's story.
And, you're going to incorporate those things, but you're
also likely going to want to do more than that.
You're probably going to want to purchase some software to make your program sing.
And as you do this, our best advice is to
create a process first for how you're going to evaluate software.
Figure out within that process, what are your priorities.
And then, as you look at software packages,
start to evaluate them against each other about how they line up on that rubric.
>> When we're picking software that's going to be a real learning
tool for our students, we take into account primarily the student experience.
For us the student experience is more then just
a flashy screen, it actually needs to be something that
puts the data immediately back into the hands of the
student, because without that they can't direct their own learning.
When choosing
partners, whether it's through software or
other technology, the Summit public schools information
team meets with folks to find teams who are aligned with our values.
We've been successful in co-developing with a number of companies, where
we can let our student's needs drive the development of new software.
So, I think the most important thing that we look
for in our software programs is that there's actionable data from
the program. The second one would be, is it adaptive?
Are the students able to go as fast as
they can, or does it backup, if they need it?
The third thing would be, is it efficient with the student's time?
Are they running into wasting time looking at
animations that are not at all educational in value.
We also look how engaging is a software program?
Is the student, is the student engaged the whole time.
And additionally we look at research, there's some programs
out there have been proven, nationwide, to work extremely well.
Finally we've gotten to the point, now in
our world, where we want a cloud based option.
Students can work at home.
students can log into any device on our school and hit their account.
>> Rocketship Education which is one of
the premier Blended Learning organizations in this country,
has a particular process that they use
to evaluate the software choices that they make.
The first thing that they're
really interested in, is whether the software is adaptive.
It has to be adaptive.
Meaning that it speeds up or slows down
based on the actual performance of the students.
Such that it's not just some pre-canned sequence
of content, but it's really adapting to their needs.
>> The second area they look at is
whether the software is aligned to the common core.
And this is a US specific requirement and as you may know, in America we're shifting
to generally a new curriculum that's asking students to go a
little deeper and apply their knowledge rather than just doing factual recall.
And all of the vendors are in the process
of trying to make their software common core aligned.
Now this is where you need to push a little bit.
because it's easy to say, oh, we're aligned to the common core.
And that might mean that we've just drawn a map from
the current stuff we have and shown you how it fits.
What's really interesting is the vendors who are
using common core as a chance to really change
their software, and do go after some of these deeper skills.
So just be aware and think about it, but for Rocketship, this is essential.
Because if it's not aligned to what your state or country asks to be assessed,
it's a lot harder to make the software a core part of your teaching program.
>> And that's an important part, which is wherever you are, you probably have.
Standards or curriculum that you want to see taught, so you
can make this criteria a key part of your evaluation process.
The third thing that they really focus on
in Rocketship, is whether the content is assignable.
What that means, is that teachers can go
into the software and actually pick out specific
modules and assign it to students based on
their evaluation of where students need more work.
So the Khan Academy, for example, used to just be a big array of videos.
What they've been doing is adding these features that teachers can actually
pick and choose what modules they want students to dive deep in on,
based on what they're seeing out of student performance.
>> Now one area to be careful, is this is an
area where a lot of teachers say they want this assignable feature.
And I think it's easy for us to imagine that we're going to be going home every
night and looking at all the data and
making the next set of recommendations for every student.
But the reality of our lives as teachers every
day in classrooms doesn't always make this a practical reality.
So in my book, I'd rather have the software have a really good internal
adaptability that it can do some of that work for you.
Rather than banking on the hopes that I could always go
in and create a customized playlist for every student every day.
And on the topic of teachers being able to assign content.
Another feature that Rocketship thinks is really important
for it's model, is the ability to sink what
is happening in the online environment with, with what's
happening elsewhere in the classroom and the offline environment.
Now this goes back to one of our basic definitions behind Blended Learning.
Which is that the content online has to
sink with other acitviites that are occurring in class.
And, on this point Rocketship feels like it's really important
to integrate whatever software they buy, with their existing systems.
And we also made this point early on.
If the data's coming in many different formats, and they don't talk well to each
other, it can be overwhelming for a school to use any new piece of software.
So being deliberate with what systems you have in place, and making sure what
you're purchasing integrates well with that.
Is essential, and different companies make it easier or
harder for the software to play nice with each other.
>> So one more point, which is that Rocketship really looks to
make sure that the content that they select is actually engaging for students.
Now this may seem obvious, but there's a lot
of content out there that's not all that engaging and
what Rocketship has found is that if students aren't
into that, then they're not going to do their work.
Now, we also can't mistake engagement
for, and making it fun for actual real learning.
And sometimes, those things aren't in concert with each other.
But if it's not actually motivating, you're
probably not going to get to learning either.
>> I ask the kids, what do you like, and what you don't like.
In, in my class, and I, I've told you this story before.
You know? I had, I had testers of online programs.
And I would kind of stagger them, every other kid.
And I had.
You know, be like, okay, time, time to go to your testing.
Which, we're piloting this program. Go ahead, log in.
And so the, the first, third, fifth,
sixth, seventh and ninth kid would log into
program A and the second, fourth, sixth, eighth,
and tenth kids would log into program B.
Except all the A kids were sitting there watching the B kids do the program.
And to me, that's like a clear winner, only
kids speak, obviously, that one program's better than the other.
Now, kids don't always
know what's right for them.
They don't always want to eat their vegetables, so,
you know, I didn't just give up right
there, but it's a pretty clear indicator from
jump which programs are going to work for kids.
The last thing I want to do in a Blended classroom, is
force kids to use a tool that they're not excited about.
Because generally speaking, particularly if you're using
web-based software, you've got a lot of
options, and there's no reason why kids can't find something that works for them.
>> What I liked
about the minis, iPad minis is that you get to play a gi, game
called Gigi, and kids play it, and it's like, it's really fun.
And they don't even know that
we're learning about, that we're learning things.
>> My favorite site to go in is called Brain Pop.
It's a link that some of the PLP playlists go to.
And it has like, educational videos,
educational games, and there's a lot of information, but it makes learning fun.
That's why I like it.
>> So with these considerations in mind, Brian and I
have a few pieces of advice as you navigate this world.
The first is that, as you start to select
your software, today a lot of the software providers
are still not really integrating with other software providers,
and they're still trying to own their own data.
And we think that schools
actually ought to own their own data and not relinquish this control.
So, as you're picking your software, be ruthless about asking that question.
And make sure that you can get the data that you need.
From these programs to operate your model successfully.
>> And one piece of that is what we would call having open APIs.
But even that doesn't solve it.
And while we're talking about technical things, we think it would be great to
have all your software allow you to easily create new student log ins and passwords
kind of seamlessly.
The jargon for this would be called provisioning.
But the big idea is that when a student arrives
and you enter them once into your student information system.
The hope is that then automatically creates all the logins for each
of the subsequent classes and software
that they're going to use across your system.
>> If this isn't the case, imagine the headache when
a student simply switches a class period or a teacher.
Imagine the poor administrator that has to go
through and basically re-roster every single
software program that student is using.
Pick your software based on it actually making
this process far more seamless to avoid those headaches.
So you don't have to do all of that manual effort.
If a student just simply switches a class period or a teacher.
>> And when you're thinking about software, think
about software that allows you to do single sign-on.
Meaning, kids can enter one password
that logs them into all their software.
Versus asking poor little seven year olds to remember
five different passwords and five different processes to log in.
To each of the pieces of software that they're using.
>> A few other questions to ask in this frame, one
is, know how many hours of instructional content these programs actually have.
If you're running a program where you need a
full year of content and lots of hours, if
you can jump in with an app that only has an hour or two of content, you're going
to be disappointed.
The second thing is that some of these
programs, while they have lots of content, they also
require you to use the program for a certain
number of hours, to actually see the efficacy bumps.
Make sure that your model, that your program model, is able to
accommodate that number of hours, otherwise it may not be a good fit.
Which is really the overriding point.
At the end of the day, understand your
model and make sure you're matching those needs.
To the software that's out there.
Don't assume that there's a one size fits all software, because it just isn't true.
>> And it's okay to use a suite of options.
No one piece of software will accomplish all your things.
And if you put this really vigorous analysis on every
piece of software, there'll all going to fail at some point.
So use these pieces of advice as guiding principles.
And then really have a system on your end
to make the evaluation, it's just the best option
amongst your choices.
