Saturday, September 03, 2005

Is blended learning a good thing for K-12?

Blended learning aims to put together the best of online and traditional practices for teaching and learning. Is this a good thing in K-12?

5 comments:

NIS said...

As you all say, blended learning in K12 is a challenge, which needs to be addressed, since it is coming. It does not involve replacing the teacher, because it is not distance learning, and it does not involve letting kids do all by themselves,.. but the right blend should be the target... hard to figure out what the right blend is? may be.. but not impossible..

NIS said...

Triggered by Amy's comments, I wonder how are pre service teachers prepared to integrate technology.
The use of technology (or the lack of it) by a teacher is many times blamed on the fact that "teachers teach as they were taught" (feels like blaming the mother, right?)
Do you think that today pre service teachers are exposed to new models, new ways of teaching, that will change their teaching approaches when they are in front of the classroom? Or is the traditional approach still too heavy in pre service teachers, that technology integration will need to be part of professional development or post graduate courses?

Jessica said...

I agree with Jakob's comments. He brought up a good point about children being raised in a blended environment. It is the teacher that needs to adapt to this environment.
I believe it is going to be a neccessity for teachers to use blended learning in k-12 very soon. Already, some schools are moving to new technology initiatives. For instance, teachers at my school received tablet PCs this year, and next year every h.s. student will have a laptop. Blended learning will be required in my school. It's on our goals, evaluations, and school improvement plan.

Jessica said...
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Brad Frey said...

I think that it would be foolish to say that blended learning is NOT a good thing for K-12. But how we use blended learning and who teaches it are very important points. Other concerns about implementing more blended learning in K-12 range from how much to include, where are the funds to use blended learning coming from and how comfortable are teachers with technology so that they can teach. Students are tech savvy, can teachers reach the same level as the students? In fact, don't teachers need to surpass the technological level of their students. We have 13 teachers in our CTER cohort, shouldn't every teacher out there be reaching out for more tech training.