The CIA of Blended Learning

The CIA of Blended Learning

Every quality classroom is built upon three components – curriculum, instruction, and assessment, or CIA for short. In a digital learning world the CIA is the same, just with qualifiers: Digital Curriculum Guided Instruction Authentic Assessment See the CIA of Blended Learning infographic below. Digital Curriculum Digital curriculum typically comes in the form of software or open education resources (OER). It is a rare situation when a teacher can actually create their own digital curriculum that has all the components of an effective lesson from an opening hook, review of previous knowledge, delivery of new content, real-world application, a summative close and tasks for students to demonstrate understanding (e.g. assignments and assessments). Typically a teacher gathers pre-made resources from others such as publishers to ‘deliver’ lesson, rarely are they actually ‘developing’ lessons from scratch. Teacher are good at curating OER materials, but this takes time. Teachers that have ‘flipped’ their classroom by creating video lessons will tell you that digital content development is time consuming, and most schools only provide a very small preparation period for teacher planning (not developing). Thus the need for high quality software or applications that can aid in the delivery of digital content is needed.   Digital curriculum can be thought of as a teacher’s aide with significant advantages:   Engages student attention and delivers content Provides data with insight to student strengths and weaknesses Has no limits as to when or where it can be accessed Is ideal for presenting and assessing student understanding and practicing skills   Guided Instruction One thing a digital curriculum can not do is establish a relationship with students. That’s...
A Messy School-wide Digital Plan

A Messy School-wide Digital Plan

Without a complete understanding of the changes in education too many administrators lead into the digital age with making teacher requirements, without understanding the ramifications. Most building administrators have the foresight to know that each and every teacher needs to have a digital presence. But without leadership and guidance this can become a train wreck – very quickly.   At one school a mandate goes out to all staff that they must establish a digital presence and use digital resources in their classroom. What and how they do so, is up to the individual teacher. Teachers scramble to find how they will do this. Some go off and make a website. One might use Weebly, or Google Sites, another learns WordPress and purchases a domain.  Others find apps like Remind or Pocket. Those strong in literacy might buy into Blogger or Edublogs. Those looking for quick digital assessments key in on Quia, Socractive or Kahoot. Some go looking for games to practice skills, from which there are a many to choose from. Others want play list and resources like PowerMyLearning, Khan Academy, CK-12, or LearnZillion. Still others grasp at platforms like Edmodo, Schoology, or Canvas learning management system.   Shortly everyone is doing their own thing, with different key codes, logins, and just trying to figure it all out. Though it is difficult, individual teachers are working with typically a single platform – of their choice. When teachers are not provided professional development, they may not see the connections between platform such as embedding Quia or CK-12 into a learning management system to create an ecosystem for digital learning...
Hybrid Model: Thinking Differently

Hybrid Model: Thinking Differently

Budget cuts and staff reductions have hit many schools hard. It’s time to look “outside the box” when trying to deal with growing student populations and fewer quality teachers to serve them. Digital content is ideal for building foundational skills. We need to look closely at how schools can use digital content to support student learning and reduce the teacher workload, yet increase teacher reach (e.g. caseload).   Use of digital content within the lab rotation model is a great deployment strategy. Depending on your state statues and/or school district regulations, schools may be able to use a support staff in the lab to monitor and guide students through the digital content. For example, in Nevada the law allows non-licensed personnel to manage computer labs when a licensed teacher is behind the instructional deployment. At the secondary level, Nevada students may be assigned a virtual lab period during the day for mathematics. Students go to a lab and work on digital courseware, rather than meeting with a teacher. The highly qualified math teacher is working with students from a distance within the online classroom. This maintains the concept of one prep period for the teacher and 30 students in a lab/classroom. It’s time to think outside the box, beyond the four-walled classroom and structured timeframes of the day.   Let’s consider a Hybrid model where students spend part of the week with their high qualified teacher face-to-face for hands-on engaging instruction and the other days in the week working with digital content. Typically elementary software and secondary courseware is a form of low level skills based direct instruction, yet...
10 Models for Courseware

10 Models for Courseware

There are many vendors in the digital content market that sale online secondary semester-based courses, which they will all claim are aligned to every state and national standard. Before making a purchase, start with confirming they meet your specific state standards. Then ponder how best to deploy the courseware. There is no one right solution, but many ways courseware can be utilized. Here are ten different deployment models to consider.  These different models demonstrate how to reach more students with a single product. Exceeds our typical 500 word post, but well worth the read, plus bonus infographic at end.   Traditional Semester Calendar-based Online Courses. Use the product as intended within an 18-week semester calendar to pace student. Highly qualified subject area teachers can be in the room with students or from a distance. This is ideal for programs with limited enrollments, such as Advanced Placement or world language courses. For example use courseware to assign AP Calculus to students who sit in the back of the room in a mathematics instructor’s pre-calculus class. Using an 18-week semester calendar will help pace students (and posting of grades to transcripts in the student information system), as the immediate access to the instructor and ease for one-on-one instruction will enhance student opportunity for success.   Single Content Area Virtual Lab. Schedule students in a lab for one period of the traditional school day. Assign one subject area (e.g. English, grades 9-12) hosted in the lab with a highly qualified teacher in the room. The instructor may conduct whole class activities (great for hands-on investigations or projects to enhance the digital content),...