Boosting Student Outcomes with Digital Learning

[Erin Abshere]

Hi All, 

Great to see everyone over the past few days - just came across an interesting article about Blended Learning and thought I'd share: http://bit.ly/12WmGpD

- Erin 

[mmriel]

It would be great to see some discussion of this provocative idea.... attract more skilled teachers, play them more extend their reach.  I think that there needs to be a career ladder for teachers but I not sure that this would lead to one.  What do you think about this?  Again, do you think it is worth putting in our course resource library for the next group of students?  It would be great if it came with a review by one of you. 

Margaret 

[Kristina Peters]

This is a perfect article for my new position. Let me read through it this week in my downtime (ha!) and share some thoughts after. Thanks!

K

[Heidi Bird]

I actually gave a printed copy of this article to the Vice President of all of the Carrington College campuses this morning.  He also asked me to forward the link to him so that he could pass it along to other key decision makers at the home office.  Just thought I'd share!

Heidi

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Kristina Peters <mrskm...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a perfect article for my new position. Let me read through it this week in my downtime (ha!) and share some thoughts after. Thanks!

K

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Heidi Bird
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[Kristina Peters]

Here is my brief review/summary:

A Better Blend is a quick and powerful read about the idea of blended learning in a K-12 environment. Not only does blended learning provide students with personalized learning opportunities, but it also provides them with access to excellent teachers. Students can determine their own learning from a menu, set their own pace, use new technologies along the way, and have a teacher monitor their work to challenge or even reteach. Teachers would benefit from collaborating and teaching to one’s own strengths, impacting more students through direct contact, and being accountable for more students across grade levels to help ensure sufficient academic growth. This model does not necessarily fit in the “traditional school” mold though; therefore, it would require a complete mindshift in regards to school schedules and teachers working together. This Better Blend would also require policy changes at the state and federal level to accommodate funding, accountability, the people involved, technology and data that is used, and the timing and scalability. If policy changes were made to encourage more schools to consider this blended learning environment, there is the potential to see significant gains among our students. 

I am very intrigued with this model as I think it would be great to have expectations of teachers being accountable for more kids, working together, and incorporating technology for project-based learning. I still have some lingering questions that I'd like to pose to the authors. I started following some of them on Twitter, so maybe we can start a dialogue that way. I am primarily interested in how this will affect teacher hiring as they outline how this model enhances teacher effectiveness. 
- Selectivity: What indicators are used to ensure that the teachers are outstanding? Is a digital presence an indicator?
- Freed time: If teachers are given time to collaborate and plan, how much time is that? Collaborating in this manner would require a great deal of planning, so it is essential that the teachers know how much time they will have throughout the day.
- Accountability: If the excellent teachers and the average teachers are working together to be accountable for all students, are there negative consequences if students are not succeeding? Would it be for one teacher or all?
- Rewards: Rewards differ for each person; therefore, would the rewards be offered through salary increases, free continued education classes, etc?

Thanks for sharing this article Erin! It let me down a rabbit hole of more blended learning and eLearning articles and white papers!
K