My digital Classroom : Blended Teaching

                                              My digital Classroom : Blended Teaching

Blending traditional and digital teaching requires careful planning. Lesson plans should include a variety of methods of teaching to engage students in learning. Then, As a prospective teacher, a series of questions should be asked while planning for blended teaching. When a math teacher should choose the right pedagogy of teaching a combination of traditional and online teaching ? How will I use blended teaching? What tool will I use to enforce my blended teaching?

In my digital classroom, blended teaching will allow me to better my relationship with my students. It is an opportunity to give my students ownership of their learning by changing the space, the time and the tools of their learning. At times, my students will learn partly online, afterward, they will discuss what they have learned in class. The teacher will have a chance to interact with his students as well as learners will collaborate with their peers in their group discussion sessions. In her video, Stacy Hawthorn mentioned the four models of blended learning: Rotating students model; we applied this model in this class when we formed with seats and tables a circular shape to encourage an engaged conversation in the classroom. The author of the video talked about flex models, self blended model and enriched virtual model. The models variety shows that blended learning could be implemented in various ways that will keep students engaged in their learning. 

In this class, the no face to face classes at various stages of my learning in this class of instructional technology applications is a testimony of blended room. I had the opportunity to read independently various articles and watch the videos that the teacher had selected for the corresponding learning target. Following the no face to face class, student met with the teacher to shed the light on what had been learned on learning management system Springboard. We had a lively discussions and reflections on the subject and more projection on the future reading. I believe blended learning in this class allowed me to ponder on my learning as well as advance learning at an acceptable pace.  

Our blended learning approach has been slightly ineffective in this class being not able to apply various models of blended learning due to the constraint of time. One semester is not enough to apply various ways of blended learning while in middle and high school schools teachers have ample of times to apply other models that were mentioned in the video. In addition, Students support to the blended learning model was limited with respect to a lively discussion on line by writing constructive comments on peers blogs. Therefore, students role in building the learning environment is important. However. I found some sporadic comments on certain blogs interesting to read. During blended learning in this class, small network communication channels were created that could be noticed in comments posted online. It was interesting to see how students choose to respond to some blogs but not to others and whether the decision making was based on the personal interests, cultural background or gender. 

As a prospective math teacher, I will use blended teaching when I see students need to work at their own pace. Math teacher who has to teach his kids how to solve one variable equation, need to investigate the students' previous knowledge. Some students still struggle with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing  like and opposite signed numbers. At this instance, the math teacher will personalize the teaching according to the students' learning need. Blended teaching will allow the teacher to differentiate his teaching until all students acquired the prerequisite knowledge to learn the concept of solving an equation with one variable.

Blended Learning Energizes High School Math Students (Tech2Learn Series

The above differentiated learning using blended learning will leads me to the most striking thing I took away from Stacy's Presentation. The teacher role in the defining dimensions of learning model and where I stand as a teacher, my role to lead and support the instruction and when I should let my students direct their own learning. The questions she raised are important while planning for blended teaching. The blended learning that is considered an instructional model will be designed at the unit or at curriculum level. Finally, the ability to tune in the parameters in the blended learning will allow the teacher to use blended teaching effectively.

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