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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Beginning to blend

My school district is rarely the first to do anything, and I'm perfectly OK with that. We really try to do what's best for students based off of the information we have at the time, not what's new and shiny. Along those lines, we are beginning to explore blended learning in our classrooms. We've began gathering resources and look at where this might be a good fit for our curriculum. We haven't ruled anything out, but we are starting to craft a vision for what it looks like in our district. 
Our students do well on standardized tests, so it's been difficult to promote a need for changing instruction. Fortunately, our curriculum department sees that we need to better engage our students with the curriculum so they can develop a deeper understanding of it. I found this picture from Sean Junkins today that really resonates that point.
We know there are different ways that blended learning can be successful in our schools, and not just with technology (could insert another Junkins post that speaks to that). We also understand that it's going to look different at different grade levels.
I've started an Evernote Notebook (here) and a Flipboard channel (here) to gather some information for our district. This link from the Christensen Institute (also located in the Evernote Notebook) has been great for me to wrap my head around what blended learning looks like. If you have other resources, we'd love to hear about them! We will definitely be relying on the experts (like the one already in PLN that I found during an EdWeek webinar I attended) for help!
Lastly, I'll share my initial sketch as I sat down to start thinking and gathering info on blended learning. I'm excited to look back in a year to see how far we've come and how right or wrong/naive some of these notes were.

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