From Questions to Concepts: Interactive Teaching in Physics — by Physics Professor Eric Mazur at Harvard

How can you engage your students and be sure they are learning the conceptual foundations of a lecture course? In From Questions to Concepts, Harvard University Professor Eric Mazur introduces Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time teaching — two innovative techniques for lectures that use in-class discussion and immediate feedback to improve student learning. Using these techniques in his innovative undergraduate physics course, Mazur demonstrates how lectures and active learning can be successfully combined. This video is also available as part of another DVD, Interactive Teaching, which contains advice on using peer instruction and just-in-time teaching to promote better learning. For more videos on teaching, visit http://bokcenter.harvard.edu

Michigan’s first virtual charter school selects downtown Grand Rapids site, accepting applications — from rapidgrowthmedia.com

A virtual charter school sponsored by Grand Valley State University will welcome its first students on September 7 at what school leaders say is its first Michigan location – a former office space at 678 Front Ave. NW.

Michigan Virtual Charter Academy, operated by Herndon, Va.-based K12, Inc., will launch with a curriculum geared for high school dropouts ages 17 to 21, offering onsite and online learning in half-day formats.

“It’s a hybrid blend of onsite and online learning, and we’ll have two shifts of students,” says Randall Greenway, vice president of school development. “This was a promising location and it’s close to where we believe our students reside and work. It also has public transportation nearby, and that’s a big part of it.”

From DSC:
For those of you involved with creating learning labs, smart classrooms, group study areas, etc. — or for those who want to enable more efficient group collaboration within your classrooms — you need to check out Steelcase’s Media:Scape product line.

One of the pieces of this configuration that I love is that they have created an easy-to-use interface in a puck-like device. What I want to see happen is for students to pull up to a movable/reconfigurable table, connect their device, and click the puck to “play” their media for the class (without interrupting the flow of the class).

Also, one monitor on the “totem” can be used for one set of information/data — or even a remote speaker via videoconferencing for example — and the other monitor can be used for someone else’s data/desktop.

Here are some images for you:

Also see the Media:Scape ad/video:

This product line is also available through Custer Workplace Interiors.

Custer Workplace Interiors

Educause Learning Initiative -- Fall 2010 Event re: Blended Learning

From DSC:
Blended learning — also called hybrid learning — offers the best of both worlds.  A great way to go!

Let's take the best of both worlds -- online learning and face-to-face learning

Also see:

Blended learning is the #1 seed

5 Stages of Workplace Learning — from Jane Hart

I interrupt my series of postings on Collaboration Platforms, to talk a little about the stages of Workplace Learnng

As I have read the comments on my recent postings as well as tweets and postings on other blogs,  I’ve identified what I think are 5 main stages of workplace learning.  I’ve tried to capture these,  in a very rough and ready way, in the diagram below.

5 Stages of Workplace Learning

But some of the key mindset changes that will move organisations into Stage 5 are:

  • recognising that working=learning; learning=working
  • understanding that informal learning needs to be enabled, supported and encouraged – but not designed or managed
  • “letting go”, so that there is a move from learner control to learner autonomy
  • realising that autonomous, independent and inter-dependent, self-directed learners are essential  in an agile organisation

More here…

From DSC:
600 people of Grand Rapids came out to attack, *&^%$& and moan about the movement towards the use of online learning…great. Just great. The GRPS’ School Board was trying to take positive, courageous action and what did they get? An auditorium full of people feeding off each others’ words — words full of emotion but often times unfounded.

Man…do I feel sorry for the school boards of America. School boards — as well as the boards of colleges and universities — are under numerous pressures right now. I commend the school boards — such as that of the Grand Rapids Public Schools  — who are trying to take positive and courageous action, and who have to fight a system that is incredibly stuck in “tradition” (i.e. “the way it’s always been done around here” and “that’s how I learned, that’s how you should learn” ). The problem is, tradition just isn’t doing the trick anymore. The world has changed and is leaving behind those folks who are still stuck in tradition. And we haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait a couple of years for those folks who “got it” to pull far away from those still stuck in tradition.

Along these lines…

I’m tired of all the bad-mouthing of elearning / online learning from folks who have never tried it. Several of the folks in the video had tried it and felt it came up short. Fair enough — that’s very valid. But if the materials weren’t good, we need to use the iterative process inherent in instructional design to improve them! Take the feedback from the students and make improvements to the materials — don’t ditch the efforts before they even get off the ground for the rest of the folks. (I do wonder what materials these students were using…? Probably boring, page-turners. We can do much better than that!)

Using blended learning is an excellent and proven way to move forward. Let’s take the best of both worlds to create a world where learning is engaging, fun, and where students can pursue their passions. Let’s let their passions drive learning in other areas/disciplines.

Let's take the best of both worlds -- online learning and face-to-face learning

Blended learning is the #1 seed

Creating well-done, engaging, sophisticated, interactive, multimedia-based educational materials takes time and money — no doubt about it. That’s why it would be wise to pool resources and create professionally-done, highly-engaging, multimedia-based educational materials (and create supplementary avenues which let the students build materials themselves and/or contribute to the body of knowledge as well). The federal government’s plans to contribute millions of dollars to create these materials is a great idea. If these materials are done well — and create/relay the content via multiple ways — we can leverage these materials across numerous school districts, charter schools, home-schooling situations, etc.

Concluding thoughts:

  • Folks, if you want to survive and thrive in the future, ditch the Model T.  Start your new engines, and get your car on the race track.
  • Burying your heads in the sand and waiting for this perfect storm to just blow over won’t cut it.
  • Change is at your doorstep. What’s your plan/response? What would YOU do if you were on these school boards?

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

P.S. I don’t know enough about the historical decisions of the GRPS School Board to comment on other areas and how GRPS got to be in the situation that it is currently in (which is probably a multi-faceted, complex issue). But an auditorium full of people dogging the online learning world is a step in the wrong direction.


See also:

  • A Harlem middle school bets on technology
    Attendance, the bane of many schools that serve a community of mostly poor minority kids, is not a problem at Global Technology Preparatory, a new middle school in Harlem, reports the Gotham Gazette. “Tabitha used to hate to go to school, now she loves it,” said Maria Ortiz of her granddaughter Tabitha Colon, who transferred out of a Catholic school to attend Global Tech. As its name implies, this school relies on technology to capture the attention of its students and give them a sense of responsibility and empowerment, as well as to teach academic subjects, such as math and English language arts, in new and more engaging ways. With this approach, Global Tech is a poster child for one of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s latest experiments, the so-called Innovation Zone, or iZone. This effort seeks to use new approaches to education, including more flexible class schedules that extend learning throughout the day and calendar year, and digital technology to improve student engagement and performance. This school year, Global Tech is one of 10 pilot schools in the iZone, which will be expanded to 81 public schools in the 2010-11 school year. The education department is hoping that Global Tech and other schools like it can finally do something to improve middle school achievement and solve one of the most intractable problems in the city’s education system…Click here for the full story
  • Florida House opens door for more technology in classrooms

Make it Blended! — from Designed for Learning by Taruna Goel

Blended learning is not a new thing. It is not a radical concept. It is not a new-age way of thinking about learning. As Elliott Masie puts it: “We are, as a species, blended learners.” So, the blend existed much before we understood and (re)defined it.

What does blended learning mean?
There are many definitions of blended learning. Some focus on the technology (aka Internet) and others focus on the theories to be blended. For yet others, a blend is all about the media – combination of instructor-led and elearning. There are a few who only call it a blend when it’s a combination of different types of elearning:

There are many things to consider before designing a blended learning intervention for example:
• The learning outcomes or objectives
• The design and content of the course
• The learner analysis – motivation and comfort with multi-media
• Use of technology and new media elements
• The degree of collaboration/interaction
• The degree of feedback and level of instruction
• Assessment and evaluation of training
• The role of the instructor/facilitator

To make blended learning a success think why before you think how.

Interview Podcast: Tanya Joosten with Online and Blended Learning 101 — Educause

This podcast features and interview with Tanya Joosten, Interim Associate Director for the Learning Technology Center at the University of Wisconson-Milwaukee. In this conversation, she talks about what faculty should know about the benefits and strategies for online and blended learning.

The Virtual University — by Anya Kamenetz | April 20, 2010 — my thanks to Mr. Jeff Wiggerman at Davenport University for this resource
Why cash-strapped colleges need to stop worrying and learn to love the online classroom.

“At this point, however, the hybrid, NCAT-style course-redesign models seem most compelling. Not only do they show some of the best learning results, but they’re in keeping with the multifaceted history of the university, and they offer the reassurance of familiarity — a scaffolding, if you will, for the transition to new modes of teaching.”

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Some slides from an Education Week webinar today:

Grand Rapids schools receive $400,000 grant to shift some instruction online – Kym Reinstadler, The Grand Rapids Press — resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder

Grand Rapids Public Schools’ proposed shift to a blend of online and direct instruction for most high school students next fall is getting a boost from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The foundation is awarding the district a $400,000 one-year planning grant to help implement its new model of instruction for core academic classes. The model features a three-day rotation in which students receive direct instruction from a teacher highly qualified in that content area on the first day, a teacher-introduced online module the second day, and continuation of online learning with support from an instructional team of teachers and tutors on the third day.

See also:
GR Public Schools lands $400,000 W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to pilot “blended” instruction model

Talking hybrid learning models – Holly Tousignant, Queen’s University Journal — resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder

A pilot project from the Principal’s Taskforce on Virtualization put two different models of virtualization into practice this past year. Leger said students in POLS 110 and BIOL102 were polled throughout the process to gauge their approval. More than 80 per cent of students polled in both courses found it useful or extremely useful, he said, adding that none of the professors involved noticed a significant drop in attendance. “The students actually said they listened more in class. … They’re worried less about taking notes, they’re worried less about missing something,” he said. Leger said while the first model of virtualization used the lecture-capture system to supplement lectures, the second model used videos alone for some students in BIOL102, which is split into sections A, B and C. Students in sections A and B were given lecture periods and video access, while students in section C only had video access. He called this model “hybrid virtualization.”

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Hybrid learning: Instructional and institutional implementation — from Academic Impressions
Learn how to address critical components of hybrid learning.

In order to have a succesful hybrid learning initiative, institutions must have several components in place: a hybrid (re)design faculty development program, technical support of instructional technologies, and a sound institutional implementation plan. Join us online to learn how to address each of these critical components and others.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
— An overview of the hybrid model and the 21st century learner
— Guidelines and best practices for institutional implementation
— Marketing to students
— Student readiness
— Quality assurance
— A ready-to-use hybrid redesign program

Hybrid learning

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