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| Blended Learning: Not Just for Your Students |
| posted by: Cindy Omlin | December 29, 2011, 07:57 PM |
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As a 21st century educator, chances are you are incorporating blended learning into your classroom. Whether it's through your own classroom website, other multimedia and virtual internet resources, a learning management system, a blog, or Google+, Yahoo, or Facebook groups, teachers today are creatively using technology like never before to enhance the classroom experience of their students. In a blended learning model, the face-to-face interaction between students and teachers is not replaced but is instead supplemented by some degree of online delivery of instruction. This relatively new style of teaching is growing in middle and high schools across the United States, and it isn't just for your students. Teachers, too, can take advantage of blended learning in professional development opportunities.
In order to meet the needs of today's teachers (and by extension, today's students), Laying the Foundation (LTF), a division of the National Math and Science Initiative, has moved to a blended learning model in its professional development program for teachers. To date, more than 80,000 pretests have been administered to students of LTF teachers using LTF's new online learning management system. This allows teachers to get a snapshot of where their students are in each of the critical subject matter strands. These same students have access to formative assessments and posttests at the end of the year. In addition to offering pretests, posttests, and formative assessments, LTF provides its math, science, and English teachers of grades six through twelve with ongoing support through a variety of online resources including:
As a result, districts are getting more value for the money they spend on teacher training. Not only is a dollar stretching further, but the cost of a blended learning professional development program is often lower than the cost of PD without blended learning. Moreover, the mentoring component of blended learning is done virtually, which substantially cuts down on travel fees. Blended learning is the way of the future for the teaching of both students and educators, and there seems to be no going back. If you've been to professional development workshops or seminars that have embedded blended learning into the training, what did you think of it? Comment below. For questions about Laying the Foundation or its move to blended learning, please email Kaci Schack, Marketing Coordinator, at kschack@ltftraining.org. Originally posted by Alix at AAE.
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