Good, Bad, & Ugly: Blended Learning Effectiveness #SXSWedu

Good, Bad, & Ugly: Blended Learning Effectiveness
SXSWedu 2017 Debate

• Julia Freeland Fisher, Director of Education Research, Christensen Institute
• Lisa Hansel,  Advisor, Knowledge Matters
• Saro Mohammed (Moderator), Partner, The Learning Accelerator

Personalized learning is one of true transformational opportunities in education.

Q1: Is personalized learning a measurable framework?

Start with the definition.

Personalized learning - Anything from personal development/interests (hobbies, individual pursuits) all the way through to traditional coursework which includes courses offered online when it isn't offered in person at the student's campus.

Public education has to meet the needs of civil society. Everyone pays in whether they have students in school or not.

• Create Informed Voters
• Serve as serious jurors
• A subset of people who will participate in the political process as leaders/legislators
• Need to know enough science to think about global warming, history to understand international relations, etc, in a broad base of knowledge
• Need to be capable of life-long learning

Large swaths of the education community have a bad understanding of what skills students need to think critically. Critical thinking is grounded in knowledge bases. 

For the sake of civil society, our young people need to finish high school with a massive base of knowledge.

Can we have personalized learning environments that are ineffective? (Yes!)

With blended learning, what we can ask is if a particular suite of tools in a particular environment is effective. Just because there is technology in a classroom, doesn't mean it is an effective learning environment.

Measuring personalized learning is much more difficult to do. What dimensions should we use to measure personalized learning? Are we leaving something out when we choose these dimensions? What about wrap-around services that students might need to be successful in an personalized environment.

Q2: What would effectiveness look like in personalized/blended learning?

Are we measuring growth at an individual student level? When we are answering that question, then we can answer if learning is effective.

Are students successful academically and personally? (Success Schools redesigned their curriculum when their graduates were making it to college but not through college.)

Standards are not enough. Let's get serious about defining a core of content, that once it is mastered, you are a graduate of a public school in the USA.  EX: Shouldn't every child in the US know and study the Constitution? In whatever language they need? At whatever level of facilitation they require.

Without a shared core of basic knowledge across the disciplines, purely personalized/blended learning will lead to communication breakdown.

Do we cover the basics more effectively and put the rest of the time toward the personalized learning? Or do we cover the basics using more effective tools and weave personalization in? 

Q3: How should we be measuring effectiveness?

Focus on individualized pacing instead of just teaching to the middle. This requires clarity in standards for outcomes.

A real fear: With real personalized pacing/learning, we will become ok with some students always being behind.

Students who come in ahead should be able to finish the core curriculum early and then pursue purely personal learning until ready to go on to higher education.

Assess tools by use case as opposed to features and functionality. 

• Ex: This works for a student who is struggling with place value. This works well for a student who tests well in reading but struggles with every day decoding and comprehension.

Open Responses to Audience Questions

How do you assess with rigor beyond "the test"?

Other forms of assessment beyond "the test" - 

• Performance assessment, rubrics for grading (time it takes teachers to do this is enormous). 
• Citizen assessment - present projects to experts in the field for critique

Find a way to connect students with similar interests across the globe in learning groups so they can collaborate/debate/discuss what they are learning.

How do you bring student agency and voice into blended programs to ensure that the tech empowers rather than simply delivers content differently?

Look for things that deliver a "but, for" - But for my involvement in this, this would not exist.

Whatever we are doing with tech should be empowering teachers and students to do more, have richer experiences OFFLINE.

How do you factor culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy into the blended environment?

Content from multiple cultures can be incorporated into blended/personalized learning. Designing for culturally relevant instruction is much more difficult.

Schools, whether we like it or not, are forming our kids identities. Social/emotional learning and networking beyond the school building with mentors and role models they can relate to is important.






*********************************************************************************All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

ThingLink for Video Adds Interactivity

I'm taking a MOOC through Coursera and UC Irvine called Advanced Instructional Strategies in the Virtual Classroom. This week, we had to turn in an assignment. One of the options for the assignment was to make an introductory video for an online course. I've used several video creation apps and programs before, so I thought it would be easy. But not so fast. The video needed at least one interactive element! That's not something I've done before.

Enter ThingLink for Video, which was one of the recommendations for adding interactivity made by the course instructor. If you are familiar with ThingLink, you know it's a tool for adding clickable icons to graphics. Recently, they've added an option for adding clickable icons to videos.

The only catch is, if you want to try ThingLink for Video, you have to purchase ThingLink premium. A one year subscription for educators is $35. I got a slight discount as a member of the MOOC, so I went for it. Even though I'd never signed up for or used the original ThingLink before. Time to find out what all the fuss is about!

So, here's how I created the video below. It's a mashup recipe, for sure!

• I used the free AdobeVoice app for iPad to create the original video, then uploaded it to the Adobe Voice website.
• I used Camtasia Studio on my PC to record the uploaded video while playing it from the AdobeVoice website. Camtasia is not a free program, but there are other screencast recording tools out there that could probably be used. They need to be able to save into a format that can be uploaded to YouTube, though.
• I saved the Camtasia video in mp4 format and uploaded it to YouTube.
• I used ThingLink for Video to incorporate interactive elements in the video.

And there you go! ThingLink for Video was very self-explanatory. There aren't too many options on the interactive icons when you insert them, which made it easy for a newbie like me. The thing I had a little difficulty with was adjusting where the links appear and disappear in the video.

There isn't a timeline you can drag the links on to tweak their starts, so you basically have to delete the link and start again if you didn't get the timing just right. Not too cumbersome, but it would be nice if it could just be adjusted on a timeline. Additionally, there are only three options for how long the link displays in the video: short (5 secs), medium (10 secs), and long (15 secs). Perhaps in future versions, the ability to more finely tune link lengths will be added.

All in all, it was easy to use and I think the video does its job. I've embedded the video below. Let me know what you think! Also, please share other tools you've used to make videos interactive. Thanks!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Finding Content for Reteaching, Blending, and Flipping

Online content means you can learn anywhere, with anyone!
Photo by familymwr used under a creative commons license

Recently I had a wonderful conversation with my district's high school educational technologist, Kristin Thompson, about apps and online tools that could be used for formative assessment and reteaching of concepts. We talked about using a tool like Socrative or InfuseLearning to get a quick feel for where students are in their learning, and then apps like Explain Everything, Educreations, or ShowMe which teachers can use to create video tutorials based on learning needs.

In the hopes that at some point we might get to provide some professional development on this topic, I added that we should expose teachers to methods for finding those video tutorials without having to create them all themselves.

First, don't forget that some of the best experts on your content reside in your own classroom. Whenever possible, I believe students should be given opportunities to teach what they know to their peers. Any educator knows that deep learning of content really happens when you have to break it apart and teach it to others. Creation of video tutorials as summative assessments for students can easily serve two purposes:

• Students can demonstrate that they really do understand the content.
• The videos created can become part of a library that can be used for teaching, reteaching, and review - even in future school years if appropriate. With collaboration between teachers, a library could be built by students and teachers from multiple classrooms and schools.

Second, don't forget there are a lot of learning resources and tutorials already out there. Teachers do not always have to create all of the content they need themselves. We started brainstorming a list of places that teachers can find content for re-teaching, and I realized these resources would also be valuable for anyone practicing blended or flipped learning. Here's the list we came up with in a short time of brainstorming:

• Discovery Education - If your school or district subscribes to Discovery Education for online video, you have a fabulous library of resources at your fingertips! You can now search for content that has been aligned to state standards.
• Texas Education on iTunesU - Kid2Kid videos and other resources. Other states and numerous universities and school districts also have iTunesU channels you can explore.
• ProjectShareTexas.org – Standards search available right on the home page for math and science resources
• Club Academia – student created tutorials
• Khan Academy
• SchoolTube - You can search SchoolTube for existing content, or create a channel of your own to upload original educational material. One of the high schools in the district where I work has a channel with some great math and foreign language videos.
• YouTube – Bookmark reputable/high quality learning channels (like the Amoeba Sisters) when you find them rather than just doing general searches all the time.
• ShowMe -  Existing tutorials created using the ShowMe app
• Educreations - Existing  tutorials created using the Educreations app (which is FREE for iOS!)

These were ideas we came up with in a fairly brief brainstorming session. I know there are numerous high quality content repositories out there that could be added to this list. YOU are the expert on this! I invite you to share your high quality resources in the comments so we can all learn together.


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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Interview on Down the Hall Podcast

Graphic Used Under a CC By-SA 2.0 License

I recently had the privilege of being invited to be interviewed on the Down the Hall podcast. Down the Hall  is produced by the External Programs and Learning Technologies (EPLT) department of the University of British Columbia. I have networked on Twitter and on this blog with one of the podcast hosts, Dave Roy (@UBCMET), a Senior Program Assistant for EPLT, and it was Dave who asked me for an interview after hearing me in another recent podcast appearance.

It was exciting to be part of a program whose purpose is to reach an audience including "EPLT/Faculty of Education stakeholders (students, prospective students – especially at the graduate level, faculty members, prospective academic and/or social media contacts, and those interested in educational technology & social media in education)."

Dave and I had a great conversation, and I hope you will take time to listen to Down the Hall Episode 36: Developing the Practice. (Special "guest" appearance by one of my dogs thrown in as a bonus! Kudos to Dave for really good editing on that one!)

One aspect that made taking part in this podcast enjoyable for me was the fact that Dave provided questions for me ahead of time, so I could think through the ideas I would like to share. Even though I got to think about my responses prior to the interview, it did not take away from the natural flow of the professional conversation we had, because neither of us strictly followed a script.

Below, I am posting the questions Dave sent me, and the notes I made for myself to refer to during the interview. You'll see if  you listen to the podcast and read my notes that what I said and what I wrote don't exactly match. You'll also see there are three questions, but in the podcast, we only discussed the first two. As I've admitted several times before, I am long-winded!

I hope you enjoy listening to and reading this information. And that you will share any thoughts it provokes in the comments.

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Q1.    One of the areas of interest you mention in your bio on your blog is “educator professional development,” and many of the things you talk about on your blog and on Twitter are about resources for teachers to use in their classroom. How important of a resource are various social media for doing this? How can teachers enhance their own development by forming networks online and sharing resources? 

·        Social media can be a very valuable source of information and professional development for educators. What I love about it is it is a constantly flowing stream of knowledge, and you can drink from it as much and as often as you are comfortable doing so. And there are multiple entry points – Twitter is a very lively example, but educators can follow other professionals on Facebook, or find teachers with similar interests using tools such as Pinterest, Diigo, Scoop.it, or the innumerable blogs written by practicing educators. At first, they may just “lurk” and watch what others are doing, but eventually they will try some of the things they are exposed to and hopefully contribute back to others’ learning. 

·         Teachers who make efforts to learn from their colleagues online through social media are nurturing their own continuous learning and growth, and adding to their professional practice in this way is of great benefit to their students. No longer do we have to wait for just the right workshop to come along or attend a great staff development experience in the summer only to have it fade in importance by the time school starts. In the age of social media, I can be exposed to a new teaching technique or tool online, ask questions about it, and try it out as soon as tomorrow with my students. I can then share my efforts back out to my online network and get feedback on what went well and what I can continue to improve. Another teacher may learn from and enhance what I just tried today in their classroom tomorrow.

Q2.    You have 19 years of experience in education. How has the increasing use of digital technologies changed the K-12 classroom in your opinion? In your opinion, does it make it even more important for teachers to work on their own development to stay ahead of the curve?

·         First I need to point out that the quality and quantity of digital technology use varies widely from classroom to classroom, school to school, and system to system depending on the resources available and the quality of staff development that is provided.

·         But in places where digital technologies are being used well, teachers and students have unprecedented access to tools and information which make differentiation in instructional delivery and the ability to demonstrate learning through product creation far more possible than ever before. Teachers can now find text, visuals, audio, even simulations, for delivering required content to students to reach the multiple learning styles in every classroom. In places with access to easily updatable websites or learning management systems, they can even provide the content for students to consume or study at home, then work one-on-one or in small groups in the classroom the next day to customize the learning of the content for each child.

·         Complimentary to the ability to deliver content in a wide variety of mediums, students with access to digital technologies can demonstrate their learning by creating products using text enhanced with graphics and video, collaborating on blogs and wikis, designing web pages or apps. The possibilities are staggering. The digital K-12 classroom is no longer confined to the four physical walls surrounding it. When the resources available are leveraged properly, the resources for learning and the audience for witnessing student outcomes are literally without limit. And the exciting thing is no one teacher has to be an expert in all of these areas – the web gives access to teachers, both informal and formal, all over the world, and students and teachers can co-learn together.

·         I believe it’s vastly important for teachers to continuously develop themselves to stay ahead – or more accurately with the curve. The curve moves so fast now that staying ahead is almost impossible. But continually keeping up with what others are doing, tweaking their ideas to work in your situation and trying something new, is extremely doable with all of the information available through networking online with other educators and education entities.

Q3.    We’re familiar with blended and online learning at the post-secondary level, with UBC being heavily involved in implementing such courses with programs like the Master of Educational Technology. How do you think blended and online learning can benefit students at the K-12 level? What form would this kind of learning take?

·         At K-12 there are multiple ways blended and online learning can benefit students. Online learning can bring otherwise unavailable courses to students who are perhaps in smaller schools or systems that do not have capacity to provide instruction in on-site subjects like certain foreign languages. For example, in Canada you may have an overabundance of French teachers and we may have numerous Spanish teachers here in Texas. Students in each of our areas can benefit from instruction half-way across the continent. Similarly, homeschooled students can take higher-level courses that might otherwise be beyond their resources. Online learning can also benefit students who are not successful in the regular classroom. I’ve read about successful initiatives which bring students into schools to work in a self-paced online environment with certified teachers available onsite to assist with questions when face-to-face assistance is needed.

·         Blended learning also offers opportunities for students in more traditional settings to achieve at higher levels. We have had a few teachers in my district work online discussion boards into their traditional classrooms. They report that students who are less likely to participate in class discussions often put more effort into online posts. They also are thinking about learning outside of the traditional school day. One of my favorite examples was a high school English course I had access to mostly for technical support purposes. My email box was getting hit by discussions of Hamlet at 11 pm and 6:30 am. What teacher does not want to see that kind of engagement in students outside of the hour or so they see them during the day?

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