Module 6: I.) Introduction

So we've reached the last week of the course and it's been quite a ride. This week we have two primary objectives. The first is to go over and review all the material that we've introduced in this course. And the second is to just give you a framework to think about how you would launch this in your own classroom or even to create a hypothetical pilot.

Let's think back to what we've covered so far in this course. In week one, we defined blended learning as a physical school that has a healthy dose of online learning and that students have some control over the path and pace of their learning and where what happens online syncs with the learning that's happening in the classroom.

Then we thought about what is high quality blended learning. And we talked about it having to have four major elements. The first is personalization. The second was that it was mastery based. The third was that it had high expectations for students. And finally students. Students had to own their learning. This notion of student agency. We then talked about the actual models of blended learning, and we reviewed four in particular. The first was the flipped classroom. We then looked at the station rotation, then a lab rotation, and finally the flex model of blended learning.

And in week two, we went deep into the student experience. We talked about how schools recommend that you start with the desired student experience that you have in mind and then plan backwards from there. And then we went into our protagonist schools and we introduced you to Summit Public Schools, kipp, Los Angeles and Navigator schools.

And from there we thought about what are those four elements that have to be present as you create this high quality student experience?

In week three, we explored how the role of the teacher is changing in some interesting ways in some of these blended learning schools. And then we talked about some of the things that teachers should be moving away from in a blended learning classroom. The idea that there's a uniform pacing guide that should dictate what all students learn on the same speed as each other. Or the idea that classroom management should always be done as a whole group rather than letting teachers focus on smaller groups. Or even the idea that grading of all those routine manual assignments might be able to be done via technology versus always manually. But then we said, don't forget, there's still lots of things that stay the same. There's that need for a very vibrant culture. And without a good culture, this can be really bad. And blended learning could actually make a school culture worse. The second thing we talked about was those deep relationships that still drive the learning. And then lastly, getting that teacher to have Those magical aha, light bulb moments and trying to have them save to do more of that kind of teaching versus the generic delivery of instruction.

That's exactly right. And in week three, we also talked about and heard from teachers about what are the moves that they use to be successful in a blended learning environment? Things like how do they start a class, get whole class attention when students may be working on computers, manage transitions, what students do when they are stuck or need help, and the role of great systems and procedures to ensure that the classroom hums along efficiently even when introducing technology. And more student independence.

With the student experience, the teacher experience, and then the models of blended learning in mind, we turned our attention to redesigning entire schools and thinking about how we question assumptions on things like the school calendar, use of time, daily schedule, uniform class sizes, the way we staff a school, and the way we group students.

Then we talked about how do you bring the right people to the table to make the change, and how do we afford this and make it sustainable?

And then we looked at technology, and we reminded ourselves that tech is always in service of our learning goals. But tech might be the thing that allows some of these ideas to scale and be possible for a single teacher. And we thought about how do you evaluate software to make good decisions and gave you a list of criteria to think about. And we looked at the importance of hardware, how to evaluate hardware to think about infrastructure, and even how to redesign physical space in a blended learning setting.

And of course, you haven't just listened passively through all of this. You've actually been having robust conversations online about these ideas, and you've been doing the assignments all along where you've actually been taking the steps to implementing high quality blended learning. Just think about it. Your first assignment, you started with a goal that you have for implementing blended.

Learning, and then you made a hypothesis of how blended learning might help you solve that goal. You worked through a budget with a real classroom example to think about the added revenue and the added expenses of blended learning. And then you went out and evaluated software and did some ratings and looking at how other people are thinking about software in the sector.

There may be some things that these protagonist schools that we've looked at are doing in their own settings that don't apply yet in your own settings, or you're just too early in the process for them to totally make sense in that context. But what Brian and I hope is that you use these protagonist schools really as an inspiration to try out these ideas in your own settings and context.

And remember, there will be failures. You cannot do things that are this complicated and new without having successes and failures both. And all of our protagonist schools have had lots of things that haven't worked well. The difference is they were really committed to the process, and when something didn't work, they went after it. They addressed it. That is the innovation process. And you have to de risk failure for yourself in order to get started and try.

That's exactly right. And what we're seeing is that while all these three schools are now getting undeniably great results, we actually need many more educators in the trenches trying this out so that we can figure out how to go at this at scale. Because there just really is no clear cookbook today about how to do this in a reliable way. Which is why even as you implement, it's probably going to take you several iterations until you, quote, get it right.

So in this next video, we're going to talk all about the idea of prototyping this and give you a framework that we've seen successfully used in schools to go after this concept of prototyping your way to success.