This blog is about Blendspace, a free website for students and teachers to organize and share information on the web. Teachers can assess student understanding and track student progress in real time.  Blendspace used to be called Educanvas. Teachers can use Blendspace to “flip” their classrooms and for differentiation. Students can upload their projects and assignments to the site. Teachers can add classes with up to 35 students. It can also be used at a school level with unlimited hosting for all teachers and students and even administrative accounts to help with implementation. There is a premium version with a cost of $4.00 per student. The premium version allows for voice commands, Google Docs style collaboration, and private webinar training.

Blendspace

YouTube Tutorial


I learned about Blendspace just this week from a colleague. She is very excited about the possibilities, so I decided to do some research and found this blog. This is a great blog for learning about Blendspace. I included a YouTube video to show how easy this site is to use.

No More Moocs

Jack, Gordon

Levinson, M. (2014, March 4). No More MOOCs: Pay Attention to Beyonce. Edutopia. Retrieved March 5, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/no-moocs-learn-from-beyonce-matt-levinson?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&clReload=7844bd28

Summary

In this article, Levinson makes the analogy between changes in the music industry with changes in education.  Just as listeners are buying singles rather than a whole album, Levinson recommends that educators allow students to assemble pieces of information themselves instead of taking an entire course.  He states the weak completion rates of most online MOOCs as evidence that today’s student doesn’t want an “album” of curriculum.  Instead, more and more learners are gravitating to YouTube to select the “singles” of content they are most interested in.

The article suggests that educators take note of this phenomenon and crowdsource their course content.  “When the learning experience is constructed for students to find problems, generate questions and devise solutions to authentic challenges,” Levinson writes, “then the need surfaces for students to seek information.”  Levinson quotes Dr. Mark David Milliron who suggests that educators “turn students loose” on a topic and let them gather all the material they can from any source they can and then share the resources they used.  From there, the teacher can “create customized playlists for units of study.”

Evaluation

I don’t quite buy Levinson’s music analogy to education.  Some of the best music on an album isn’t always the hit singles, just as some of the most important information isn’t the kind students will easily find.  Also, sometimes a song needs to be heard in the context of the entire album to appreciate its value, just as parts of class only become significant in light of the other information presented in the semester or year.  Still, I appreciated his suggestions for making learning more meaningful to students by engaging them with compelling topics and questions and allowing students’ curiosity to drive their information seeking behavior.  I think this is a great way to hook kids, present a variety of content, and make learning more relevant.  From there, the teacher needs to help organize this information to give it some coherence and meaning.

Dayton, David

"How 'Flipped' Classrooms are Turning the Traditional School Day Upside-Down"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/american-graduate/july-dec13/flipped_12-11.html

I just saw this in my Google news feed a few days back -- Newshour did a brief bit on flipped classrooms, interviewing principals and teachers involved in the process and highlighting some of the benefits.  The comments section on the page had me thinking, though -- some folks were drawing connections between this model and the traditional university seminar model, while others raised the question of motivation on the part of the students at home.

The only thing that disturbed me is that the presentation seemed to imply that there is an either/or situation here -- either a classroom consists of teachers lecturing in front of the class, and the class practices at home, OR the class reads/watches the lecture at home, then practices in class.  Logically, though, a well-designed classroom learning environment should have both direct instruction (the lecture) and teacher-assisted practice of skills (guided and independent practice).

Rene Hohls
October 16, 2013

DISCUSSIONL: October issue of THE Journal

For those of you who already receive this monthly eJournal, I apologize for duplication. For thos eof you who have not seen it before, this is a really important voice in the overall technology discussion in education - for librarians and anyone else involved in planning and implementation in our k-12 schools.

This edition has some very interesting discussion on the trends in tech but also looks at implementation successes and failures of tech in the school settings. There is a lot to be learned from the trial and error currently going occuring. Some school districts (like mine) are moving too slowly; others (like LAUSD) have moved too quickly. The explosion of technology has created a new predicament for educators, parents and students: tech in (and out of) our schools is a moving target - for many, it is similar to jumping on a moving train. Sometimes you just have to pick the best option available at the moment you are ready and then JUMP ON!

THE Journal - October 2013

A Different Kind of 'Flipped' Learning: Students Teaching Students

McGuire, D. (2013, May 13). A different kind of 'flipped' learning: Students teaching students [Web log entry]. Retrieved from http://www.eclassroomnews.com/2013/05/31/a-different-kind-of-flipped-learning-students-teaching-students/

The author discusses how he integrates multiple technologies in his daily lessons as a fifth grade teacher.  In showing his students how to operate the technology, McGuire's students became so engaged that his "role is now more of a facilitator while [his] students collaborate, coach, and instruct each other."  As a result, student achievement has increased significantly. This personal account I peppered with examples of engaging and meaningful lessons.