Week 1: Learning To Be Blended

Practicum Description

This semester, I plan to design a course for high school teachers who are interested in learning to blend their face-to-face courses with technology. For the last several years, I've worked personally to be mindful of the types of assignments I've given my English/Language Arts students, specifically making sure I'm not simply substituting paper/pencil and computers. While I probably fail more often than not, I'm pretty happy with how my students are growing, both with their work and their ability to collaborate with each other online. 

This past semester, as I designed a truly blended unit for a novel my students read, I kept getting bogged down with questions: what did my students need to do to show me they understood the book; what technology would be the best tool; what should be online, and what should be face-to-face; how do I integrate all this "stuff" in a logical manner; how in the world do I assess my student's work?

The more I thought, wrote, and worked through with my students, the better I felt about the unit. It's not perfect, but it's so much better than just my face-to-face assignments. 

Envisioning the Product

This project is meant to be helpful for ELA teachers who want to up their technology game. In my experience with my colleagues, not all ELA teachers see technology's usefulness in our courses. I know, I know...we are supposed to be the in the Information Game and open to all possibilities. Unfortunately, I work with teachers who will assign a research paper, tell students to use Google Docs, and who then expect said students to print out the work. And if it's not printed, ready to turn in at the beginning of class, the student is penalized with late work. This practice is not only a misuse of technology in 2019, but it is impractical for what teens will be expected to do in college. We need to do a better job of getting students ready for their world, not stay stuck in ours. 

What I propose to do in my design is to hopefully help teachers rethink their practices that keep students from seeing technology as a tool for learning rather than a point-and-click, scroll-through, time-waster.  Plus, I'm one of those teachers who learn more when I try to teach someone else, so even if other teachers never use my project, it will actually help me be a better instructor. 

There are a few books I want to read to begin my journey (okay, a couple of them are re-reads): 

     Blended Learning by Catlin Tucker  -- specifically for ELA teachers

     Teaching Online in K-12 -- Sarah Bryans-Bongey & Kevin J. Graziano

     Lessons from the Virtual Classroom: The Realities of Online Teaching -Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt

     The Tech-Savvy Classroom -- Sara Kajder

I'm not sure of each module yet, however, I do know that I'll incorporate badges -- everyone loves a sticker!! :-)