Michael Wacker's List: Blended Learning

A couple of quick takeaways for me are that it's nice to see professional development called out as something we need, but we really have to get away form the paradigm of thinking it's something we do "to" teachers or is done "to" us.  The other takeaway I have after reading this is around a question I've asked before. If we're truly "blending" our teaching and environment, what does the space look like? How can we professionally develop as teachers to be better prepared to adapt and modify our existing learning spaces to better meet the needs of a flexible, student centric, tech infused learning environment? If shifting the ENTIRE teaching model paradigm upside down is NOT an option, what is? Is this something that needs to be built, modeled, and then iterated?

I culled some nuggets from the reading.

"5 Components Needed for a Blended Learning Model" http://bit.ly/izP5Iq
it's worth keeping an eye on the link between our vanishing boredom and our lack of innovation. It's the sort of trend that could literally destroy the world without anyone realizing what the root problem is

I love the idea of students coming here to dive deep and then working with a partner, building a project that demonstrates knowledge gleaned and or, wonderings for next steps and more learning

Oh #blendedlearning, what a tangled web of jargon and interpretation you leave us with.
These BL models are so vague, they probably think this post about them.
Revisiting the model definitions again this morning with some colleagues. A question has come up around the professional development models and whether or not a one-time workshop supplemented with online activities and resources would fall under the enriched virtual model? What if it was self opt-in and not "every one" "every time?"
Another piece I'm worried about as folks just dive right in are around change management, sustainability, knowledge sharing, and data use.
I would like to see more written  and shared about the different forms of assessments and how theses pieces trigger the differentiated levers needed in an individualized learning environment.
But maybe the vagueness truly is by design. If that is the case, we should at a minimum tread lightly before anointing saviors and evangelists purposed to learn us good on some blended practice.
Without going too deep down the hole of how "I" define blended I would just say that at its core, its about a student centric environment designed to leverage interactions via highly differentiated supports and resources available to our students and teachers.

Ben trying to find the right flow for accomplishing this task. I think I may have it, and all from my browser, no less.
This solves the problem for me of archving or making content available offline for my learners and myself. 
One optional alteration within Wappwolf could be that instead of syncing from Dropbox to Drive, you could have it sent automatically to an eReader (kindle, nook, etc)

"Mark webpage as read in Pocket then use joliprint to convert to pdf and then drop in dropbox/drive
New item marked as read
Add file from URL

Notes: Step not seen here is the use of http://wappwolf.com to automate the drop into a specific folder in Google Drive Account #automation #pdf #pdfsave #workflow #Gdrive"

While I agree that this couldn't be farther away from a Panacea, I would push against the idea that there is no use for quick checks or low level knowledge recall feedback systems. 
Revolutionary, no
But another delivery/assess tool for learners, I am okay with that in some situations.

I know this type of uber hack is a turn off for a lot of my teacher friends, but it is nice to know that someone figured out how to hack your form. This means that having it as a script or native element of forms in the future is a real possibility.

This is really tremendous. I love this graphic calculator, as well as the scientific calculator Ein. These features are great for Google Apps users though...

"The new Desmos Calculator...
is up to 15 times faster
makes it easy to share graphs by email
lets you embed a thumbnail into a blog or math forum
has a redesigned options tab with Projector Mode & Pi Labels
lets you add textboxes to explain the amazing things you're making
makes Points of Interest automatic for any selected expression"

Small interactive applications and learning opportunities for students. This site keeps getting better, keep it coming

State Profiles, enrollment numbers, graphics and reports are all compiled in this nice and tidy package. Very exciting to have this resource which I presume will be iterative and continue to get better and better as the collective knowledge and successful models of blended and online schools continues to come out from the pockets of implementation occurring today.
Definitely going to be keeping an eye on this.

Keeping Pace with Online and Blended Learning: A Guide to Policy and Practice 2012 in conjunction with iNACOL’s Virtual School Symposium, being held this week in New Orleans. Keeping Pace strives to be a resource for K-12 online and blended [...]

"

The exemplar I looked at actually featured our own MSLA due to its teacher-led approach.

“Within every school there is a sleeping giant of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change.” (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001)"

"Domain I: Fostering a Collaborative Culture to Support Educator Development and Student Learning

Domain II: Accessing and Using Research to Improve Practice and Student Learning

Domain III: Promoting Professional Learning for Continuous Improvement

Domain IV: Facilitating Improvements in Instruction and Student Learning

Domain V: Promoting the Use of Assessments and Data for School and District Improvement

Domain VI: Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community

Domain VII: Advocating for Student Learning and the Profession"

Picking and Choosing Digital Content.
There's a lot to digest here, but the thing that I'm ruminating on tonight and really excited about is the piece here about "The Open High School of Utah" 
"We can't afford proprietary materials."
Nor should they have to pay for the curation and collection of resources in today's accessibly resource/content rich world. The collective intelligence of the crowd is where the best investment may lie and the folks that figure out how to harness and empower their teachers and leaders to access, build, and adapt these materials into shareable nuggets of awesome, will be leading the charge.  Already we are seeing more and more teachers feeding in to the "Git-Hub(y)" tools that are changing how we design, collect, and deliver content (Gooru, OER, You Tube, Open Source Flex Books) and so many more.
Check out the article, let me know what you think? Are we close to seeing this teacher networked shareable culture or do we stay beholden to curriculum and content providers?

"The Open High School of Utah in Salt Lake City is an example of a school that puts the curriculum in the hands of teachers. The 3-year-old virtual high school serves 350 students full time and 50 students part time. Fourteen percent of the student population qualify as "economically disadvantaged."
All the teachers create their own curricula from open education resources, says DeLaina Tonks, the school's director.
"Especially in the economy we're experiencing right now, people can't afford proprietary materials," she says. "Open education resources are an answer to that call."
The school began by hiring instructional designers to choose the curriculum, but found that the materials were not engaging enough for students. Moving that responsibility to the teachers has been more successful, says Tonks.
Each teacher spends a year gathering materials and creating a comprehensive curriculum before teaching students. Teachers often use materials they find online, Tonks says, or they create their own.
So far, the strategy has worked. The Open High School of Utah's test scores are higher than the state average, and last spring, the school won Utah's Best of State Award for Curriculum Development."

If you are using Google tools in your classroom and are looking for some places to start and tweask lesson plans, then look no further. Here we have a tremendous resource collected and built upon by google certified teachers and trainers from around the globe. While you won't find simple and easy to sort CCSS alignment, you do get a plethora of places to start when thinking about teaching search, using spreadsheets, maps, or other google tools in your classroom.

The value of synchronous, fast, easily accessible screen sharing in online and blended learning is exponentially huge. 
Problems of practice:
Teacher wants to virtually support or observe a students thinking through their eLearning rotation, but doesn't want to be managing a dashboard/hub, but as students ping him on GChat, would like to be able to "hop in" on their screen/session.
Why this is awesome: 
Teacher that could remotely jump in on a students session to support in real-time while the learner is moving through adaptive curriculum, would be a powerful and useful for the child and the teacher. 
Problems of practice:
Students want to demo a site or tool for another student, without having to create a recording. 
Think about students could share their screens and demo for their peers or talk through a simulation they are working on.
Students want to be able to quickly ask a question of a peer by showing their screen.
This could be especially powerful for those learners working in code or programming.




Note: I know there are a myriad of tools that allow for capturing, or recording your screen. And, that via a Google Hangout you can share your screens as well. What this tool does that I think is huge is it removes barriers of time and access and makes it instantaneous without the need to download software to your computer (just a browser extension) and is accessible to anyone with a Gchat and a browser.

Collaborating on graphic organizers can be done so many ways digitally and face to face. What I like about this tool and these templates is the ease of use and tight integration with your cloud services in Drive
If you are using Google Drive and Lucid Chart for your diagramming and graphic organizers, this is a really handy list of free to use templates that integrate cleanly with Google Drive, regardless of the operating system and computer you are using.

I agree and like a lot of this stuff being discussed here, but I still feel really uncomfortable when we downplay it this much and use terms like students and teachers, instead of children and adults.

_"Blended learning is not ‘just another district initiative’,’” “It is a large scale opportunity to develop schools that are more productive for students and teachers.”_

Yes, I hear and see the shoulder shrugs and hurrumphs, and maybe it is just semantics, but it seems to be a lot easier to downplay the human element of our work when we do that. That said, I hope to dive in and unpack this #dlnsmartseries document in the near future.

Curating a watch list of sorts for the players in the BL world that we are hot on or excited about what they are building. This tool SIbme, definitely got our attention, wondering about cost of course, but also if the "out loud-ness" of this may be too much for many right now.

Professional development software doesn't need to be difficult to set up and cumbersome to use.<br />Professional development doesn't need to be a chore and something to check off the compliance list.<br />With Sibme's technology, it’s easier than ever to share frequent, meaningful feedback with your colleagues.<br />Sibme is flexible and customizable. It adapts to the unique needs of your department, school, district, organization, or institution.<br />You can start your school or institution off small, with a small department or team of teachers and administrators who collaborate well together. Then Sibme can grow as needed.<br />Sibme lets you privately share best practices, training, and coaching with people you respect and trust. It’s the epitome of authentic professional development.