Blended Learning

This week, I learned more about blended classrooms online and in-person classrooms. My Educational Technology course is a blended course because we cover material in-person, complete online assignments, communicate with students and the professor via email,  Blogger, SpringBoard, and Yellowdig. Although we have in-class time scheduled each week, the meeting time did not fit into my schedule so I do not have time to learn in a classroom setting as the class time and place was changed. While working on my major project, it would have been nice to have a set of instructions in front of me that were further explained in class rather than watching a video. If I do not know what I am supposed to be looking for in videos, then I may miss potentially important information. I am doing well on the project, just the first steps were a little confusing since I was on my own.

My philosophy on blended learning is that it provides an incredible learning opportunity for students and teachers, but it is a newer transition for classrooms, so teachers may not be familiar with how to handle the transition or may not have the funding for technology. Blended learning engages students. Students are introduced to technology at earlier ages more often now, so they in a way are more advanced than my generation. Us as teachers need to keep up with them to make sure they are learning the content. Technology use helps students learn the way they know how. This video helps further explain what a blended classroom is.

Stacy Hawthorne talked about her blended learning taxonomy. There are many types of rotation models. One of them is a flipped classroom. I have learned a little about flipped classrooms. A flipped classroom is the typical classroom and homework elements are reversed. Students are able to view videos from home before they go to school, so that class time is devoted to applying the content they just learned about in the videos. I like the idea of flipped classrooms because teachers will not have to spend as much time teaching the lessons in class as students are already familiarized with the lesson ahead of time. There are downsides though, some students may not have access to the internet, some may just not watch the videos, so not all the students are on the same page. This goes along with blended classrooms being a new innovation, so things still need to be done before it is perfected. This impacts my own learning because I see in some of my classes already that we need to watch videos or do readings before we go to class, but who actually does the readings? I know that means I do not go to class prepared, but there is no motivation to read ahead. Teachers should include quizzes whenever they want students to read ahead or watch a video. I need to have a reason to do something.