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Peter J ArashiroMODERATOR MyBlend - Yesterday 4:35 PM #Learning A nice, concise, blog post about personalized learning in the classroom. This site (kinda reminds me of what we're trying to do with MyBlend site) is worth keeping on the list of sites to monitor for content:

Peter J ArashiroMODERATOR MyBlend - 5:42 AM #Socrates Are these questions we should be prepared to answer about MyBlend? I think so :-)

I appreciate the focus on preparing students, parents, and teachers for the "shift" that happens when customizing and personalizing instruction. This article focuses on the ground-work that needs to be laid to transition parent and student mentality from a traditional to blended environment.

Solid post. I Digg it. Would love to solicit guest posts very much like this with Michigan faculty. I think his words about giving "a) some examples of research that supports blended learning and b) have some concrete samples of the different types of work that students will produce and c) demonstrate what assessment will look like. If you cover these three components, then my experience is that parents are thrilled about the change." could also ring true for MyBlend PD.

"Instead of a course syllabus or description, I've found it more useful to give students a "roadmap for success".  Here is an example from my middle school Geography class.  The idea is that all learning options are clearly laid out and routes for success are made clear.  It is well worth spending a class or two clarifying what the journey will look like in a blended learning environment and I've found that this reframes the experience for students in a way that they understand.  It also lays the groundwork for the one-on-one conversations you will have with students moving forward.  You will want to delineate the different segments of the class, discuss possible timeframes for moving through the challenges and what the options are for demonstrating mastery at each stage.  In this particular roadmap, some items are bold because they will be done by all students.  Other components are framed by a dotted line meaning that only some students will be eligible for those challenges based on their progress at specific stages.  You will want to make the roadmap as clear as possible so students are able to understand the journey to the point where they develop a sense of agency around their work. "

Peter J ArashiroMODERATOR MyBlend - Yesterday 7:09 PM Ok, just one more Grant Wiggins blog post to share (likely not the last!). In this post, he talks about the mindless practice of posting objectives or Essential Questions in classrooms so that students and teachers will know what they're working towards every day. Seems like a pretty good idea in theory, but in practice, the focus tends to be on the POSTING (so that teachers don't get written up for not doing this) instead of it helping guide teaching and learning. The big thing that came to my mind was how BH uses objectives to guide the design of instruction. I think we all agree that this is a good thing. However, these same objectives are also presented to students when they see how they're doing (assessment-wise) in class. When students read these objectives, do they make sense or are they more inclined to just look to see if they met the objective or not (by looking at the percentage). I think the strategy to use objectives to inform instruction is sound and we'll need to find ways to make it useful for both teachers and students.

"Aaron Sams and Jon Bergman from Woodland Park, CO have flipped their classrooms on their head. Now, kids watch lectures at home and come to class to do more experiments and interact with the teachers. They've also implemented a Moodle testing solution to verify that the kids have mastered each topic before they can move onto the next. " This is a nice highlight of Jonathan Bergman by our friends over at TechSmith. Here, Mr. Bergman shares a bit of his rationale for moving toward a mastery model in his Chemistry course and how it has allowed for differentiation which is a topic of importance with MyBlend partners.

I have been planning to do an #EdTech review on Socrative and Infuse Learning as they are fantastic tools for getting a healthy pulse of a blended classroom, a checking on prior knowledge, an exit slip, a checking for understanding or even for creating a formative and collaborative quizzing environment for learning. Think clickers on steroids really, but without having to purchase and distribute a uni-function device. The interfaces will allow any web connected device for more in depth responses from the learner that goes beyond multiple choice functionality. In fact, Infuse Learning even goes as far as allowing students to respond to a prompt in real time by drawing a picture and the submissions all get aggregated on the teacher screen so that the class can see everyone's drawings in one main view. Brilliant. I see that @JohnHardison1 beat me to the punch not long ago in promoting the use of these tools. In fact, he even has included chunked video screencast tutorials from his YouTube account embedded right in the post so that you can experience a demonstration about Infuse Learning options from the teacher and student perspective. Nicely done John! I hope our MyBlend community can check this out and benefit from learning about the power of these tools.

This is a video talking about a history teacher's attempt to tackle differentiation through his work now at Knewton. It reminded me so much of our recent Willingham talks Peter started with us about kids who gravitate toward either experience (like Logan) and those who gravitate to content knowledge. It also reminded me of what we are doing with MyBlend except from a content creation focus.

This site is an example of the value of being a social aggregation space for the topic. I can see how MyBlend would bring the added value of being Michigan centric.