Michael Horn and Speaker A recap five shifts in the teacher role: from lecturer to facilitator, fixed to dynamic groups, explaining everything to targeted intervention, content-only to skills and mindsets, and generalist to specialist. Blended learning happens gradually, and next week covers restructuring time, staffing, and budgets.
So it's probably getting pretty clear that Toto, we ain't in Kansas no more. And it can be a little intimidating to see all these differences being laid out at once. And I'm here to remind all of us that this is an iterative process and that schools who go down this path can do it gradually in pieces.
So we covered a lot this week. So let's review how a teacher's role changes in blended learning. The first shift that we talked about was from lecturer to facilitator. The second shift that we talked about was from convening fixed groups to really this notion of dynamic or changing groups. The third shift that we talked about was from explainer of all concepts to really a targeted intervener. The fourth concept that we talked about was this notion of moving away from content to just thinking about content now, as well as skills and mindsets. And the last shift that we talked about was moving away from being a generalist and toward a specialist so that teachers can focus on their strengths and passions.
We remembered the importance of a vibrant school culture, those deep relationships, and those, aha, magic light bulb moments in learning.
So we've dove in to see how our protagonist schools are actually making these changes. And this week we also explored how do teachers start moving away from certain concepts in a traditional classroom?
And then finally that deep dive into the moves of a blended learning teacher and the systems that they use to make their classrooms hum.
Now, next week, we're going to go up a frame and start to think about how do we actually restructure schools, the use of time, staffing, and budgets.
And Rob will jump on and tell you about our assessment for this week. And we're fascinated to hear your thoughts on the discussion boards about this exciting changing role of the teacher in a blended learning classroom. See you next week.
Hello. Once again, we want you to think about your final assignment, Prototyping a high quality blended learning experience for students. This week's assignment is an intermediate step to get there. And just as the final assignment, this one's going to be peer assessed. Over the last couple weeks, you've heard a lot about the changing role of students and teachers and seen it in our protagonist schools. I'm sure it's gotten you thinking a lot. We've seen that on the discussion boards. Now we want you to step back a little bit and think about your situation, what's happening in your particular situation related to mastery, personalization, student agency and relationships, along with how that changes the role of the student and also changes the role of the teacher. What you're going to do this week on your peer graded assignment is is that you're going to come up with a hypothesis of a problem that you have that you think blended learning could help you solve. You're also going to have a theory about how blended learning can solve that. And the final step of that is you're going to think about how do you assess or evaluate whether or not blended learning did help improve student learning on that particular challenge that you're posing.
