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.
The Assumptions We Make
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來自 New Teacher Center 的課程
Blended Learning: Personalizing Education for Students
6 個評分
從本節課中
Redesigning a School
How can we challenge our assumptions about the ways that schools have always been organized and run? How do leaders manage the change as their organizations transition from traditional models to blended learning?
與講師見面
Brian GreenbergCEO
Silicon Schools Fund
Rob Schwartz
Michael Horn
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.
Now this quote has been rightly or wrongly attributed to Henry Ford.
But regardless of its true origins, it's worth thinking
about the essence of this, as we, we design schools.
>> Put another way, every machine is
perfectly designed to produce exactly what it produces.
And organizations are the same way.
Our schools produce the results they do because we've built
them in a way to make those results.
And it's only by questioning the assumptions at the core of schools
that we can start to think about machines that get very different results.
Now this isn't Only, only about blended learning.
But if you're going to redesign a school, you can't
just think where's there technology and where's there not technology.
You actually have to go at the core assumptions around,
the calender, where students go, how we use adults, and redesign
schools with those ideas in mind.
>> So let's dive in: Assumption one that we make
is that the school year should be from September though June.
Now, we know the origins of this from the agrarian calendar when students
had to get off for summer, so that they could tend to the farm.
But, in this day and age, does this still make sense?
And even more so when we have evidence about the summer
slide, that actually affects students from
disadvantaged communities where they don't continue
to learn during those summers, and they
just slide off and their performance wanes?
We have some studies that, point out the
detrimental effects of this in the resources section.
It's a big assumption that you want to keep in mind as we re-design schools.
>> So let's put this calendar from June, September until June into the
bucket of things you may want
to reconsider if you're starting from scratch.
Assumption two, school should be from 8:30 to 3:30 every day
of the week.
Three ideas for you to think about in this.
One is the brain-based research we're seeing about just how many hours of sleep
an adolescent brain needs, and the kind
of school schedules that would most accomodate that.
Secondly, we're in a reality now where
many families have both parents working so the
custodial hours the schools need to think about
may be different than just 8:30 to 3:30.
And lastly, it is interesting to look internationally and compare the number of
hours the students are in schools in other countries compared to our own.
We'll focus on two of our protagonist schools and look at
the schedules they've created around the ideal experiences for their students.
>> Assumption three.
The daily schedule should be fixed for all students so that
all students receive the same amount of time in every single subject.
Now, this may make sense from a law and order
point of view, and managing a, a strict schedule each day.
But from the perspective of
individualizing and personalizing learning for
each student, we have to question whether this still makes sense.
>> And assumption four.
Class size is super important, and also should be roughly the same all day long.
Now, there are some really interesting debates
about the effect of class size, and we
put a couple of links in the resources section if you want to dive in more.
But for this purposes we're going to start to wonder
what are some of the schools doing to have much
larger class sizes at some part of the day and much smaller class sizes
at another, and actually be deliberate about
that choice versus defaulting to a one-size-fits-all approach.
>> Assumption five.
The default for all students is to be in a group of students
in a box with a single credentialed teacher at the front of the room.
In this week, we're going to look at lots
of schools that are rethinking how they use staffing.
To use different adults
in different places and reconfigure classrooms in
radically different ways to personalize learning for students.
>> Assumption six.
Students should almost always be grouped according
to their age level and by grade levels.
And the history of this is, you know, kind of interesting as we move out of
one room school houses, into more specialized elementary,
middle, and high school, and grade level expertise.
But we think it's interesting to say, well, why do we continue to still do this?
>> Now, stepping
back.
As Brian and I have been working through this course with you.
What we've come to realize is that we actually could
have retitled this course, Redesigning Schools from the Ground Up.
And what we think is really important to point out,
is that the school leaders that are using blended learning.
The most interesting ways to boost student learning.
They're not just doing this as a cosmetic fix, but they're really thinking through
the structures and systems of their entire schools as they do this, so that they
can meet each student with the need that they have, when they have it.
>> So keep these six assumptions in mind,
and let's look at how the schools are
actually starting to question them as they ask
themselves, what's the ideal way to run their schools?
