Blended learning, what does it mean?
Like many teachers, my first impression was that "blended" meant nothing more than what the term itself implies: the integration of technology into the traditional classroom setting. I envisioned desks in rows filled with students bent over laptops, listening to lectures or watching videos while I assumed a supervisory role and walked around the room, nodding here, redirecting there, effective but somewhat sad in my detachment from my beloved content. Not an entirely bad scenario given the digital orientation of our students, but a deflating one for an English teacher who has invested almost two decades developing his own structures and strategies that have proven somewhat successful.
Fortunately, over the past several months, my understanding of blended learning has evolved. Horn and Staker's book Blended placed this seemingly abrupt shift in a historical context--a heady read, assuredly, but an integral one for understanding the mercantile forces driving what they term "disruptive innovation." (I even liked the chapter on ships.) Where this first book was informative, however, Tucker's Blended Learning was applicable. Horn and Staker showed me that blended learning is a necessary stage in a natural continuum; Tucker, herself a former English teacher, showed me how the blended model can be implemented in my classroom. Instead of traditional rows of desks, I now see students creating, communicating, and collaborating at lively work stations. Instead of monitoring computer screens, I see myself designing flipped lessons, tutoring small groups, and very much engaged in differentiated acts of learning.
Differentiated acts of learning?
I rather like that phrase. A bit overwrought maybe, but then an English teacher is still an English teacher. I've learned that about blended learning, too...
