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Blended Learning

Explore strategies, tools, and insights for effective blended learning. Discover ways to combine in-person and online teaching seamlessly.

Top Five Tech Tools for New Teachers

by Miguel Guhlin April 5, 2022

written by Miguel Guhlin

What are the essentials you need to share with new teachers? I can’t tell you how many workshops I’ve put together that addressed the needs of new teachers. What combination of must-haves do new teachers need? I asked Clint ISD’s Crystal Fuentes, “What are your ‘top five’ for new teachers every year?” Let’s explore her responses. But before we do that, let’s revisit a related important high-effect size instructional strategy.

The Power of Collective Action

Want to know which is one of the toughest strategies to take advantage of in a school? Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) is the one that most often comes to mind. With an effect size of 1.36, many instructional leaders look at that and say, “Why not us?”

Collective Teacher Efficacy can be defined in the following way:

Through collective action, a staff can have a positive influence on student outcomes. This includes disengaged and/or disadvantaged students.
Meaghan Loftus, Associate, CT3

But how do you achieve CTE in your school? It is suggested that you have these six influencers:

Advanced Teacher Influence. This happens when an organization listens, acknowledges teachers, and teachers influence decisions made at school.
Goal Consensus. Teachers set the goals for the school, not only the leadership. Who’s writing that campus improvement plan? If it’s your assistant principal on a weekend at home, then this is a #FAIL.
Teachers’ Knowledge about One Another’s Work. This involves teachers getting to know what each other is doing. More importantly, getting to know how each other’s work impacts their own.
Cohesive Staff. This refers to how teachers agree with each other on core educational values or issues.
Responsiveness of Leadership. When leadership listens to teachers and works to cut distractions, that’s responsiveness.
Effective Intervention Systems. This ensures there is structure to support teachers and students.

When working to set up new teachers, it’s worth considering these contributing factors. As Meaghan Loftus points out, together, these six points ensure CTE. And when you are preparing new teachers, much of their success depends on these six elements. Without them, new teachers, no matter how enthusiastic and tech-savvy, will struggle.

Now that you have some background on CTE, let’s take a look at Crystal Fuentes’ suggestions.

Tip #1: Classroom Management Tech Tools

Dealing with problems and developing solutions as they arise is one way to manage a classroom. Another way is by empowering students to make choices. Then, permitting them to learn from the consequences of those choices.

My favorite approach to classroom management involves building teacher-student relationships. That is, getting to know students and building trust. The best classroom environment I experienced involved building relationships with students. While disagreements occurred, having a family environment worked best with my bilingual class.

“One technology tool that’s in my top five is ClassDojo,” says Crystal. “I want teachers to know how to use ClassDojo.” No surprise, ClassDojo has these goals for itself:

Create a positive culture.
Give students a voice.
Share moments with parents.

The ability to access ClassDojo on any device makes it handy. For language diverse situations, its message translation is invaluable. And for some too committed to being accessible, you can set quiet time hours.

Tip #2: Learning Management Systems

Do learning activities revolve around ancient, paper-bound curriculum resources? You may not be pulling activities from a file cabinet in old manila folders. Instead, you may be relying on primary sources and current information available online. You may be co-constructing rubrics with your students. Sure, you can limit yourself and your students to paper. But who wants to shuffle papers, deal with 3-ring binders, and worry about missing work?

A better way exists if you have robust internet and device access for students. Learning management systems make it easy to:

End the paper chase.
Distribute resources as needed in an instant.
Timestamp student and teacher work.

Today, there is no shortage of learning management systems. That is, digital classroom supports that make access to resources easy. What’s more, they ensure you can connect with students in academic ways. While ClassDojo may be a classroom community builder, LMSs ease the paperwork. And that’s a huge benefit.

Crystal suggests relying on tools like the following:

Google Classroom is the learning management system, and Little SIS provides more granular administrative control over Google Classroom. Skyward is a student information system (SIS) and digital gradebook. There are many combinations of solutions. I would be remiss to not point out other popular options. Those include:

Microsoft Teams, OneNote, and the SIS tool of choice (e.g. Skyward, TSDS/PEIMS)
Instructure’s Canvas and SIS
PowerSchool’s Schoology and PowerSchool SIS

There may be other options, but these are some I have seen in Texas schools.

Did You Know?

Learn more about your learning management system of choice via TCEA’s online, self-paced courses. These affordable sessions ($29 each) provide you with what you need to know to get started. Courses available include Google Classroom, Canvas Educator, Schoology Educator, and Microsoft 365 (covers Teams and OneNote).

Tip #3: Collaborative Tech Tools

Collaboration and discussion of academic content can have a powerful impact on student learning. Consider this tidbit of research:

If students know content, coming up with explanations helps fellows strengthen their understanding. Even when they don’t know content, conversations increase learning (adapted from source).

To aid collaboration, there are many tools. Clint ISD’s Crystal Fuentes recommends Padlet and Google Jamboard.

Tip #4: Lesson Delivery Tools

While you can still stand and deliver lessons in a classroom, there are alternatives. Now, you can do that, AND make your Google Slides deck available to students. You can mix in checks for understanding as well as turn and talk opportunities. And teachers can put in place low-stakes assessments with rapid-response measurement. What’s more, the right set of lesson delivery tools empowers student voice and choice. They also make it easy to engage students in bell ringer activities.

Crystal suggests these tools that work with Google Slides:

You may find this comparison of the two similar tools by Rachelle Dene Poth (@rdene915) helpful.

Learn more about the research and best practices for using choice boards in the classroom. Take the TCEA online, self-paced course, Choice Boards for Educators. If you’re ready to become a choice board pro, this course will make you shine. Choice boards promote student choice and voice while providing differentiated instruction. How fantastic does that sound? Not only that but they’re proven to work.

Tip #5: Tech Tools for Creation

To round out the list, Crystal shares two powerful creation tools. These are tools every educator needs to know about. She suggests that new teachers know how to use the following:

LucidPress. This tool makes it easy to design visual resources, newsletters, and more. Some may substitute this tool with the free for educators, Canva.
Flipgrid. A free, no-cost tool available to support video recording and communication. This is a must-have tool to make student reflection, interviews, and more possible.
Screencastify. A screen recording tool that makes flipped classroom lessons a breeze. Students can also record videos and create screencasts.
Choice Board Menus. A powerful tool for supporting student choice in learning. This suggestion is less a technology tool and more of an instructional strategy. Yet the ability to blend multimedia sources into choice boards transforms this strategy.

A final tool that TCEA Board member Crystal Fuentes finds a powerful aid in Clint ISD: Promethean Panels. Be sure to reach out and follow her on Twitter to learn more. As Crystal shared in one of her tweets:

“Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions.”

April 5, 2022 1 comment

Blended Learning BYOD Microsoft Windows

Creating Equitable Opportunities to Develop Strong Literacy Skills

by Microsoft Education Team April 4, 2022

written by Microsoft Education Team

Microsoft recently announced the launch of new digital reading tools that will help learners reach their full potential. We are excited to share an expanded literacy portfolio designed to address a diverse set of student needs, help close achievement gaps, and empower teachers as they support their students in achieving their goals.

The new Reading Coach experience in Microsoft Teams is a reading practice tool for students that automatically generates individualized exercises based on each student’s specific needs. It works to increase reading fluency—the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and meaningful expression. It also provides guidance on correct pronunciation and syllabification, shares visuals to help vocabulary recall, and positively reinforces students to help build their confidence as readers. Reading Coach, available this summer, comes built into Immersive Reader, our free reading tool that supports equitable education.

Microsoft also announced new updates to Reading Progress, the tool that helps educators create individualized reading fluency assignments with powerful insights easily used to inform instruction. Reading progress currently measures and identifies correctly read words per minute, accuracy rates, and challenging words, and the update will now also automatically detect prosody—the patterns of expression and intonation in a language. The updates also empower learners to work at their own pace in an encouraging environment while helping teachers provide just-in-time support. We’ll also be enabling teachers to see which phonics rules students are struggling with, providing more insights to help inform instruction. Guided by this data, educators will have the information they need to help ensure students’ emotional, social, and academic needs are being met.

With these updates, Microsoft is reinforcing its commitment to inclusive learning by providing real literacy solutions for students, teachers, and school administrators. Read more on the Microsoft Education Blog about how Microsoft is helping to accelerate reading fluency and creating accessible, individualized, and data-driven learning experiences.

April 4, 2022 0 comments

Announcements/Important Dates Blended Learning Good Teaching

Today Is the 11th Annual Digital Learning Day

by Jennifer Bergland February 22, 2022

written by Jennifer Bergland

Happy Digital Learning Day! This annual event highlights all the great ways teachers and students are using digital tools to explore, create, research, and publish their work.

When Did Digital Learning Day Begin?

The first Digital Learning Day was February 1, 2012. In the press release announcing this event, the sponsoring organization, All4Ed, described it this way:

“Digital Learning Day will celebrate innovative teaching practices that make learning more personalized and engaging and encourage exploration of how digital learning can provide more students with more opportunities to get the skills they need to succeed in college, a career, and life.”

What Does Digital Learning Day Look Like Now?

Fast forward to 2022 and celebrate how far we have come. In reality, Digital Learning Day is every day in our classrooms. Teachers and students are using digital content and devices in a wide variety of ways every single day. We set aside this day to amplify all the great work of our students and teachers. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate how technology can empower and support teachers, personalize learning for students, and ensure that all students have the great teaching—and the great tools—they need to succeed in today’s hyper-connected world.

Where to Find Resources

All4Ed has created a space for teachers to upload and share the different ways they are using digital tools with their students. You can search by grade level, category, or type. You might find a few resources from your favorite technology association (Hint! Hint!). They have also created some FlipGrid questions that you and your students can respond to. Take a few moments to let your students use their voices to share how they are using technology in classrooms.

Make sure you share all the great things you are doing with your students and use the hashtag #DLD, #TCEA, @TCEA, @All4Ed, and @OfficialDLDay. And from all of us at TCEA, thanks for making every day Digital Day in your classrooms!

February 22, 2022 0 comments

Blended Learning Good Teaching

Tips for Implementing Blended Learning

by Christine Moore February 7, 2022

written by Christine Moore

What Is Blended Learning?

Blended learning is defined as “any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path and/or pace.”

How Does Blended Learning Help Teachers?

What does this mean for teachers? It means we have OPTIONS! I am not going to talk to you here about the different models of blended learning. Instead, I want to address those of you who are interested in pursuing this model but may be intimidated or feel overwhelmed.

What Are the Benefits of Blended Learning?

I won’t sugarcoat things– making the shift to blended learning comes with its own challenges. Blended learning is not a cure for discipline issues or low performance. However, blended learning can, in my experience, help with those things. Engaged students are less likely to cause disruptions in class. Additionally, students who claim ownership of their learning are more likely to learn more.

Where To Start

The key is to start small and start with your objectives. Never try to design learning around a technology tool. Always begin with your objectives. If you are unsure what tools and methods will help you reach your goals, ask for help. You are not alone. Other teachers are some of your best resources.

There is no single “right way” to use blended learning. There is just the “right way” for you and your students. The challenging part is getting started. It can seem like a lot, especially if you identify yourself with the words “I’m not a techie” or something similar.

Ready To Try It Out?

Here are some tips I have learned in my own teaching and have shared with the teachers I work with:

Talk to someone. Who do you know that has successfully blended their classroom? What did they do? Do you have a tech coach? Call them!
Start small. Pick one thing. For example, maybe you want to start with an interactive choice board or checklist. Remember KISS – Keep it Short and Sweet.
You don’t have to be a “techie.” Nobody knows everything and it is important to remind yourself and your students that we are all lifelong learners.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Isn’t that how we learn? Let the students see that you tried, and how you dealt with anything that did not work. Sometimes they need to see an adult handle failure in a positive way. Then try again.
Let the kids help. Tell them you are trying something new. Chances are, they will want to help. If so, let them! Nothing encourages learning like ownership. Some of my best moments in teaching have been when I gave my students the chance to teach me.
Learn to let go. This is one of the most important and challenging aspects of blended learning. Letting go and letting the kids take charge of their own learning is also one of the best parts of blended learning. It is also one of the most difficult things to do. We want to help. We are used to being in charge. Letting go not only helps them, but frees up your time to work with those who need it most.

The biggest and best tip I can give you is this: be patient and kind to yourself as you embark on the blended learning journey. Prepare for wrong turns and flat tires, but it will be worth it when you reach your destination.

Christine Moore will be presenting Blooming with Blended: A Blended Learning PD Experience at TCEA 2022. Don’t miss her session TODAY!

Interested in learning more about blended learning? TCEA has a self-paced, online Blended Learning Course worth 12 CPE credit hours for just $29. Also, check out these additional Technotes articles on blended learning.

February 7, 2022 0 comments

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