PERSONALIZED AND BLENDED LEARNING
personalized and blended learningBlended Learning, a new paradigm in education, was introduced to me by my wife, Melanie Gildharry. I remember us starting a discussion about it while driving to an interview in Minnesota. She shared about addressing students' path, pace, and having them access information any time and any place. I also gained information about the origination of Blended and Personalized Learning and the Clayton Christensen Institute. I was fascinated by this concept and started reading up a bit more and asking tons of questions. I came to realize that I was actually integrating Blended Learning in NC since 2008. To the right is a reflection on the start of my Blended Learning journey.
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Technology integration has always been a great focus for me as the benefits to teaching and learning are extremely impactful and enduring. I integrated technology in North Carolina when I taught Algebra 1, Algebra 2 and Geometry and students used it to do research, create presentations and access a software called Study Island. Then, the use of technology also created excitement and intense interest as students took charge of their own learning and tracked their progress. However, I can say that during the time that I taught Math to English Language Learners ELL, I have become even more interested in blended learning and I have seen the greatest transformation in my teaching and student learning as my students have shown immense growth as a result of technology integration. I have used simple and everyday technology tools such as Google Translate, IXL Math, and Google to more robust platforms such as Padlet, Blendspace, Thinglink, TodaysMeet, Weebly and others. Out of all of these, Blendspace is by far my favorite as it has allowed me to effectively and seamlessly differentiate learning to meet the needs of all my students. With access to YouTube, Google Search, Google Drive, and other features, I am able to design lessons and create assessments to assess students’ understanding. Additionally, the ability for students to be able to access information any time, any place and work at their own pace on an individual path was extremely transformative.
During the 2016-2017 school year, along with the continuing use of Blendspace, I also placed a great focus on student representation of knowledge gained. To do this, each student created a Weebly website in which they provided multiple artifacts to demonstrate proficiency in each objective as well as represented their creativity for tasks that I designed. My students’ eagerness to begin this was extremely inspiring and I was excited to engage in this new dimension of teaching and learning in order to transform and powerfully impact student growth. |
My creation relating to blended learning
Blending learning in my classroom
A snapshot of how I blended learning in my classes (2014-2017). I like incorporating other powerful strategies that research also supports.