successful blended-learning environment for students is a process of innovation, not an event.
Schools that implement blended learning successfully are constantly re-evaluating their students’ and teachers’ needs, adapting their blended-learning models, and refining their rallying cry in order to create truly student-centered learning environments.
Teachers provide support and instruction on a flexible, as-needed basis while
students work through course curriculum and content. This model can give students a
high degree of control over their learning.
Personalized learning is tailoring learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests — including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn — to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible.
What blended learning offers is a rational approach, focused on redesigning instructional models first, then applying technology, not as the driver, but as the enabler for high-quality learning experiences that allow a teacher to personalize learning and manage an optimized learning enterprise in the classroom.
Horn and Staker’s blended learning definition asks the blended modality to enable the student to have increased control over time, place, path and pace. The difference between solely using technology in addition to teacher-centered instructional models and understanding the fundamental shift using blended learning implementations toward transformed, student-centered instructional models is getting clearer.
Genius Hour begins with the idea that students should actively create their learning rather than passively consume it. It allows students to make decisions about every aspect of the learning, including the strategies they want to use when developing a new skill, the pace of their work, the materials and resources for the project, and the format for the products they'll create.
The unifying concept is a sense of wonder and curiosity. To tap into these qualities, we use the following guiding questions: If you could learn anything in school, what would it be? What are you most interested in right now? What do you care about deeply? What are your passions and interests? What nagging problem would you like to solve? If you could make anything, what would you make?