 Welcome to this week's ESU8 Wednesday webinar. I'm Molly Ashoff and I am the e-learning specialist here at ESU8. This week's webinar is an introduction to blended learning. When one thinks of blended learning, many words come to mind like personalized learning, flipped learning, online instruction, individualized, personalized, time, path, place, pace. In this webinar, I will define blended learning, look at the models of blended learning, and we will watch blended learning in action. Let's begin by defining blended learning. There are several technical definitions, but let's listen to how several Nebraska blended learning leaders define it. Learning is choice. Blended learning, if we look at the Christian Institute, says that we are giving students choice over one of four things or a variety of those things, but it can be time, place, path, or pace. So we give our students choice, we're giving them small ownership in a different learning that's taking place. Now we're not always giving them choice of all four of those items, sometimes we're gonna pick one of those items to give them some choice on. As an example, we might give students choice over the path or the way that they get something done. So we're giving them choice over the path. We're saying you have to complete these objectives, but in which order you can decide. Sometimes we need them to go through prescribed order, so that's not gonna work. So sometimes we say, you know what, you get some choice over your pace. We're gonna give you some videos, here's some resources. The teacher's gonna work with you one on one. And throughout that time, you're gonna be going through this series of events. As you do those events, you can take the assessments and build your own path by going in the pace that you need to go. Sometimes you might have to watch a video two or three times for it to completely make sense, for you to answer the questions to show that you mastered the content. Sometimes you're gonna buzz right through, and you're gonna get that choice to be able to move at the pace that you need to work through, even when students in your classroom aren't moving through that pace. So when we look at having choice, we're giving students ownership of letting them say that I am gonna take my learning to a new level, because I have choice, you know, either time, place, path or pace. Blended learning is just really great teaching. It takes what you're already doing in your classroom, and you add some other components to it, possibly the online component or a small group or the collaboration, but it's meeting students where they are and moving them forward at their own pace and giving them some control of their learning. Blended learning is a program, an educational program, that blends online learning with face-to-face learning, and the idea is that we're giving students some opportunities to control the pace of their learning, the path of their learning, to really allow them to, or allow the teacher to lead together the best parts of those two learning mediums, so hopefully make sure students are successful. Blended learning is a concept, it's a thought process. I don't think it's anyone physical or digital thing, but it's a different way of thinking. I really think that it's a pedagogical approach to teaching as opposed to any of the tools and things like that. The tools definitely help, but it really is digging into blending the best of our virtual world with our analog world. Yeah, well, to us at Omaha Westside Community School, this personalized learning is really learning about the learner themselves, I mean taking students where they're at, and then what we've developed in Omaha Westside Community Schools that we're really proud of are our five elements of personalized learning. So to me, in order to really talk about personalized learning, you need to look at multiple components of those five elements that would be knowing your students, allowing for voice and choice, flexibility within the classroom, and that could be with grouping and also the way the classroom is set up, using data to direct that instruction, and then also the use of integrated technology. And I don't believe that any one of those things alone means that you're personalized learning, but the more of those elements that you're incorporating together, the more likely your chances are that you're personalized learning. From listening to those leaders, we see that there are many ways to explain what blended learning is. A very simplified thought is mixing face-to-face learning with online learning to get blended learning. There are also several models of blended learning or variations of them, but most stem from the models laid out by the Christensen Institute. I will go through those, but know that they are just a base model that you can adjust in order to fit you and your classroom. It's also important to know that you can mix and match or practice many models, and you don't have to blend everything all the time. There is so much flexibility in blended learning that you can customize it to you and your students. So there are four types laid out by the Christensen Institute, the rotation model, the flex model, a la carte model, and enriched model. I will start with the rotation model and talk about some of the different variations that we see here. In a station rotation, a teacher has stations set out for the students, and the students have to rotate through all the stations. There is usually a teacher-led station. This allows the teacher to be more one-on-one with a smaller group of students. There is always an online instruction component. The students may be working individually or in small groups with that, and then there is a lot of times a collaboration or a group work project type of station. In a lab rotation, this is usually used when students don't have one-to-one access or multiple devices or computer access in the regular classroom. So then the teacher has the whole class rotate through the lab at some point to get that online component of blended learning. In a flipped classroom, teachers usually record themselves giving the lecture or giving some part of the content to the students, a demonstration possibly, and then the students can access that home or in the class on their own. Sometimes flipped classroom is used interchangeably with blended learning, and it's important to remember it's just one component of it. And then individual rotation, this would be where each student basically has an individualized learning plan, and then they work through some sort of a playlist or whatever the teacher uses. In this case, this is just a blend space playlist, and a student would work through all of these modules that the teacher has put in there for that student based on their assessment and their needs. The flex model, this is the second model in that diagram from the Christensen Institute, and this is in which online learning is the backbone of the student learning. So student move individually on a customized online program. There is a teacher there if they need help or support, but for the most part they get most of it through online. The a la carte model, this is where a student takes entirely online class or course, and they also are in a brick and mortar school or learning center. So they come to the school and they take their classes or their online courses right there at the school. The fourth and last model is the enriched virtual model. This is which students are required to have some face to face lessons or sessions with the teacher, and then they also have course work to do online. This they could do at home or they could do in the brick and mortar setting. With the enriched virtual model, we see this sometimes happening in our distance learning classrooms where the teacher maybe only meets with the students once or twice a week, but they're required to be at those meeting times and then the rest of the work is done at the student's pace and their time, place, whatever works with the student. Now we're going to watch how station rotation can be used in a blended learning classroom. This rotation is taking place in a grade four or five math class in order to support blended learning. We take the best facets of a face to face classroom with a teacher and the children, and we take the best facets of an online environment and digital tools and kind of merge them together. There are four stations at the math with technology hub. Students are using a virtual geo board to solve a problem and then explain how the app helped them on an online discussion board. Assignments like this have made math this student's favorite subject. She submits her work at the end of the rotation on a virtual learning environment or VLE that gives her teacher instant access to what she's completed. So I will be able to go on tonight and look and just quickly scan and see how many people A completed it and understood it and B how many will need more support. So it's almost like a yes they have it or no they don't have it and that will influence my grouping and teaching for the next day. Then there's the math with myself station that has students completing problems individually and the math with Miss Dale So what would the area be? 88? How many agree? Thumbs up if you agree. Thumbs down. Well let's do the math. So for that 10 to 15 minutes I have their full engagement and that's the most important time for them to acquire the new concept and what they and that's also the most important time for me to assess what they know what they don't know so that I can base you know future lessons on that too. The final station has students working with a partner that way students can feed off each other which is helpful because you have a buddy that like maybe knows a bit more than you or you know a bit more than your buddy that you're working with. Seeing this kind of collaboration is one of the goals from the Huron Perth Catholic District School Board's innovation project. They're using a virtual learning environment to implement blended learning practices which supports critical thinking and communication in math class. Rachel Skillen is a grade nine math teacher who's also taking part in the project. She finds students are more engaged and confident when they're working together. If it's a teacher-led lesson you know there might be pockets of students that are not understanding but they don't feel comfortable enough to you know ask questions or to really express that they're not understanding but when they're working together and collaborating then they feel like they're kind of in it together and they feel more sense of teamwork and that they are working toward a goal together and so I think all of those things help. The students also appreciate the time to talk things out with their peers and small groups. The teacher explains it in like more of like a teacher way like it's more professional when your friends kind of know what you like struggle in and stuff so they can explain specific parts to you. And hearing that explanation process can give the educator some insight. And if you match 9.5 from that, that'd be the why. So I go around and I listen in on their conversations that they're having and then they have much more opportunity to ask questions of me and you know we have that sort of dialogue or that conversation going back and forth so I get a much better sense of sort of what their thinking is and where their level of understanding is and then it gives me an opportunity to give feedback to them throughout the lessons. In this lesson students have to watch a video that's posted on their news feed in the VLE and then solve a problem that asks them to find a missing variable. We got the assignment and then we went into groups which is good because group work and math go really well together. Students can use whatever resources they want in order to get their answer. The classroom is transformed where there are no walls and kids have access to all of those learning materials and each other in a way where the student's ideas and the student's thinking really becomes the content of the learning. At the end of the class they present their answers and explain their reasoning. Just before they leave they also answer one question on the VLE to help the educator gauge what the students took away from the lesson. So it gives me that instant feedback and it gives them the instant feedback as well to know that they understood what they were supposed to be learning or they met the learning goals. And when students leave the class the VLE allows them to access resources when they need it and encourages further collaboration. Our world now is all technology and it helps us because when we're at home studying for a test all the stuff is on the internet so we can go and look at it and we're interacting with more people in that classroom. It also helps teachers collaborate. Teachers love going into other teachers classroom to look for ideas so the idea that you can do that in an online environment without having to leave your own school or your own home it's it's incredibly it's an incredibly rich resource for teachers. But it's not just about using new technology or resources it's about coming up with a pedagogical approach to meet the diverse needs of all students. We used to come at it where we would just say here's a great piece of technology everybody use it because it's awesome and now I think we're coming at it from an aspect where if we give them the reason why we want to use these tools then we can really achieve true blended learning and accomplish those pedagogical goals. The innovation project used a blended learning format in order to provide professional development for the teachers taking part. The plan is to make use of the work submitted this year. I think that's going to really deepen our understanding of thinking in mathematics and how we can help students make thinking more visible. Stay tuned for my next blended learning webinar on the why of blended learning. Why do blended learning? What are the benefits? And as always if you have any questions or you need more information feel free to contact me.