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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 comment

Good Teaching

Stories of Our Favorite Teachers

by Andrew Roush May 7, 2019

written by Andrew Roush

Educators come in as many varieties as the students they nurture. There are mentors, taskmasters, Socratic question-askers, and old-fashioned nerds just excited to spread their knowledge. All them, however, share a mission to grow the next generation, to give them the tools and opportunities they need to succeed.

It’s a mission inherently understood by many who work in education. And since 1984, Teacher Appreciation Week has been a way for everyone to celebrate the work educators put in to achieve that mission. Because of that, nearly everyone has a story, epiphany, or memory connected to a teacher, librarian, administrator, or other staff member who gave them a chance,or helped them discover something they love.

At TCEA, we work every day to support the mission of education by promoting digital learning. This week, we asked the TCEA staff about their favorite teachers. Here are a few of the stories we collected.

Erin Vitellaro

Administrative Assistant, Membership

“Anyone that attended my high school between 1980 and 2013 remembers our Physiology & Anatomy teacher, Coach T. Even though I graduated more than 20 years ago, I still remember his unmatchable energy and enthusiasm — and how his 1000-watt personality and passion for teaching motivated his students. He made a huge impression on me, and I’ll never think of femurs or spleens without thinking of my time as his student.”

Lori Gracey

Executive Director

“My favorite teacher was my high school band director, Mr. Bennett. I was a nerdy kid who lived for band and thought that everyone else did, too. He saw how important it was to me and empowered me to do more than I would ever have dreamed of, including reading out loud to our band the “anonymous,” and very badly written, poems I created urging our band on to better performances. He believed in me and helped me to believe in myself.”

Andrew Roush

Communications Specialist

“Where I grew up, we were preternaturally blessed with a whole bunch of very good teachers. Some were funny, others were earnest. All of the memorable ones made us feel comfortable, like they somehow always reminded us that we were all just people, some very young people, trying to do good things.

But a special shout out goes to Mr. John McMillan of Bastrop High School. He is a friend of my uncle, and before sophomore English, I only knew him as an excellent guitar player. Eventually, though, he showed me that language is just as flexible and useful as a fresh roll of duct tape. He also once described me as “superfluously verbose,” which, based on my current career, was a rock-solid insight.”

Peggy Reimers

Director of Professional Development

“My first-grade teacher was awful. So Miss Gruel, the next year, was like a little piece of heaven. She was just nice! That year, I had moved to Sunnyside Elementary, and the school name fit the teacher. I remember crying on the front porch later because the school year was over.

Another was Mr. Meckler in seventh grade, who was the band, English, and shop teacher. The eighth grade boys took shop, and the girls took home economics. So, as a seventh grader, three of us went in to talk to the principal because we wanted to take shop, too. The next year, the girls got half a year of home economics and a half a year of shop, and the boys got a half a year of shop and a half a year of Spanish. This was in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and we were able to walk in and ask the principal to make that happen. And surprise, surprise, we were able to take shop the next year.”

Got a favorite teacher whose legacy you want to share? Let us know in the comments, or share it with us and your fellow ed tech fans on Twitter or Facebook.

“Classroom View” by Kathy Cassidy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

May 7, 2019 0 comment

Educational Research

Research-Based Strategies that Accelerate Student Learning: Part 1

by Lori Gracey October 1, 2018

written by Lori Gracey

If you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of research. I spend a lot of my time examining what the latest research says about teaching and learning and the use of technology and try to see how that all fits together for the best learning in the classroom. I know that teachers today don’t have time to try a million different things; they need research-based strategies that will definitely work in their classroom.

John Hattie

Lately, I’ve been studying the work of John Hattie and consider him as someone that every educator should know about. Hattie conducted more than 800 meta-analyses of research studies for his initial study and more than 1,400 meta-analyses of a total of 80,000 studies involving 300 million students for his final data. (A meta-analysis uses a statistical approach to combine the results from multiple studies in an effort to improve estimates of the size of the effect.) He was looking at the effect sizes of the many strategies that influence learning outcomes. In other words, he looked at a HUGE amount of previously-done studies to determine what provided the biggest bang for the buck in learning. His results are available in his book Visible Learning and others.

Effect Size of Research-Based Strategies

But before we can look at what Hattie discovered, we have to understand a little bit about effect size. “Effect size” is a quantitative measure of the magnitude of a phenomenon. In other words, it tells you how “good” or “valid” something is. In education, researchers typically use the illustration below to help define effect size.

If a study says that something has an effect size below 0.0 (the red zone), then it has an actual negative impact on learning. Moving between schools, for example, has an effect size of -0.34 and a lack of sleep has a negative effect size of -0.05. (A word of caution: if a vendor is trying to sell you a product with a negative effect size, don’t buy it!)

If a study says that something has an effect size between 0.0 and 0.15 (the yellow zone above), then it has the same effect on learning as you would expect to happen over one year for students who did not attend school but simply matured. It’s not a negative effect; it just doesn’t make any difference. Single-sex schools (0.08) and school choice programs (0.12) are two examples.

If a study says that something has an effect size between 0.15 and 0.4 (the orange zone), then it has the same effect on learning that you would get from students attending school for one year. Examples include summer school (0.23), preschool programs (0.28), and ability grouping for gifted students (0.30). These aren’t bad; they just don’t provide as much “bang for the buck” as might be hoped.

What we want to see is an effect size of 0.4 or greater (the blue zone), meaning that the phenomenon causes a significant difference in learning. Anything above that magic 0.4 number is golden. Hattie, from all of his research, has put together a comprehensive list of 252 influences and their accompanying effect sizes that you can look at. It’s pretty eye-opening, to be honest. You may be surprised at some of the strategies that we use in education that really don’t make much of a difference.

The Research-Based Strategies That Work Best

What Hattie found is that “the key to many of the influences above the d = 0.40 hinge-point is that they are deliberate interventions aimed at enhancing teaching and learning.” (Visible Learning for Teachers, p. 17) That means that we can choose to implement them; it’s something that we have control over. And the really good news is that they don’t require additional funding, just time and thought. By using his research, we can work smarter and make a profound difference in student learning. Here are the nine that we will examine:

Collective teacher efficacy
Self-reported grades/student expectations
Cognitive task analysis
Response to intervention
Jigsaw method
Conceptual change programs
Teacher credibility
Micro-teaching/video review of lessons
Classroom discussion

Because this is so important for what we do every day in education, I would like to take several blogs to discuss the top nine strategies for accelerating learning. We’ll examine what each one means, how it works, and see if there are any technologies that could be used effectively with it. In the next blog, we’ll look at numbers 8 (Micro-Teaching/Video Review of Lessons) and 9 (Classroom Discussion).

Taking Action

I would encourage you to share these blogs with your peers and discuss what they might mean in your specific teaching and learning situation. Then select just one to implement for the next few months. I would love to hear back from you on how this is going and what changes you are seeing in student engagement and achievement.

October 1, 2018 4 comments

Educational Trends Good Teaching

Birds of a Feather Create Innovative Classrooms Together

by Susan Meyer June 12, 2017

written by Susan Meyer

Learning new ideas and technologies from ed tech experts is what many elementary educators look forward to most at the Tots and Technology summer conference. But not all of the experts stand at the front of the room presenting. And not all of the learning takes place in organized, hands-on sessions. One of the most exciting parts of the conference is seeing our attendees interact with each other. They share stories from their own classrooms, libraries, and schools. They can hear what strategies and tools are engaging students in districts both across the state and around the country.

Many of these resource-rich conversations take place over breakfast or just waiting for a session to start. However, at the Birds of a Feather sessions, attendees’ enjoyed having these valuable discussions facilitated for them. Teachers and administrators gathered together with their “flock” of peers who taught at the same grade level or performed the same role. Each flock, from PreK and early elementary learners up to fifth grade, administrators, and electives teachers, met to discuss the challenges and successes they’d faced in the previous year.

Challenges and Successes

Many of the teachers in all grades shared some of the same challenges. One teacher from a PreK classroom explained that at her school, they received iPads to use with their students halfway through the year, but no instructions for how to use them with the kids. Another teacher echoed that they wished they had started their technology initiatives earlier in the year.

However, there was talk of many successes from the year, too. Some teachers had started maker spaces and tech labs for their students. Others were proud of new apps they had introduced in their classroom to maximize student engagement or make assessment a breeze.

New (School) Year Resolutions

One advantage of a summer conference is that it really allows for reflection on the previous year and preparation for the upcoming one. Here are just a few of the plans educators had for their next year:

Sydney Musslewhite (@smussie) said that next she wants to begin the year with Google Classroom, try new apps like EdPuzzle and NearPod, and actually put them to use in the social studies classroom.
Arianna Zampierin (@arizampierin) said she wants to use a variety of QR codes at different stations in order to reach all kids at different instructional levels.
Delainie Hanson (@delainie_hanson) said she will try to match TEKS with technology for greater efficiency.
AmyLittle (AmyLittle1234) wants to increase mentoring and coaching and involve parents by training them on how to use technology to engage digitally.

Sharing Great Ideas

What makes Birds of a Feather such a great resource is that the participants meet in small groups and really get to engage with exact grade-level peers experiencing the same challenges and successes with their students. They may face challenges figuring out how to adapt a technology to work with their content requirements. Or they might face similar lack of buy-in for new resources. By working together, they also shared some great ideas for apps and how they can be used for specific skill building. Here are just a few apps that were shared:

Jennifer Almaguer (@Jenn_Almaguer) suggested using the VersoApp so that students can have a discussion while keeping their identities anonymous. The teacher can still see which student makes each comment.
Angel Herring (@AngelinHouston) shared that Epic Books is free for teachers. It allows access to a digital library of 25,000 books and videos.
Several teachers suggested Chatterpix as a great way to get students engaged and excited about learning new content on any subject. With Chatterpix, you can make anything talk, including pets, friends, objects, doodles, and more!

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Educators at Tots feel a sense of belonging in talking with their peers fighting the good fight to get more technology in schools. As one teacher said “It’s great to come to Tots because everyone here just gets it.” While they might face reluctance from their schools about the need for technology expansions and district buy-in, for these two days, at least, they can be surrounded by like-minded ed tech fanatics ready to take on the world and transform learning.

If you want to join the networking, learning, and laughs at Tots and Technology, there’s still time to register for our second conference in July. It will be held in Arlington, Texas and will also feature the Birds of a Feather session. Read more about it and learn how to register here.

June 12, 2017 0 comment