Written by Taking my previous post into consideration I thought it would be good to turn the tables back in favour of Blended Learning. According to Research Data Centres of Canada (an interesting report on the digital divide in Canadian schools and homes from 2003 – it’s a bit dated http://www.publications.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/81-597-X/81-597-XIE.pdf) almost 100 percent of students use some form of digital media.
The obvious point to be made is that our students need to be able to learn with the tools that people use nowadays. As for the Scientific American article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper-screens&page=2 in my last post that stated reading from books to be more conducive to retaining content it leads me to believe that we need to pick and choose the media we use in class not based on convenience, wow factor or popularity.
A case in point: in a recent Cohort21 Google hangout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3xQt6clFmY there were some questions asked on how Twitter could be used for student learning. Some obvious points were raised about student Twitter tags and content of the tweets. Assuming that we are not choosing Twitter because it’s convenient (most everyone has easy access through cell phones and of course online), the wow factor (comments are immediate) or its popularity (over 500,000,000 reported users http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/) then we would want to use Twitter to help our students learn how to communicate articulately and succinctly all while maintaining digital responsibility. See fellow Cohort21 educator Alan MacInnis’ post for another idea on using Twitter http://cohort21.com/alanmacinnis/2013/11/16/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/ .
There are lots of opportunities for learning these skills but by no means are they the only skills to learn or the skills that students need to focus on every lesson. This is where blending comes in. And it is an educator’s job to make sure the ratio of digital to analog learning environments benefits our students’ development.
Therein lays the simple answer. It is neither one nor the other but the blending of both books, poster making, writing by hand and the use of digital media online, word processors and in applications. I would love to see more recorded on the ratio of blending and which methods are chosen for what reasons and how our students’ performance was either enhanced or inhibited. It’s a very exciting time to be in education! with lots more to come . . .
Hi Brad,
thanks for this thoughtful post. I think that you would be interested in looking at what is out there in terms of definitions of “blended learning”. For example, is an assignment that uses Twitter a form of blended learning? I would argue no, because it is just a product; however, having students follow &/or engage with politicians and political issues via twitter would be an example of ‘modification’ of the classroom through the use of technology.
I look forward to exploring this further in our next F2F!
Thanks,
garth.
You are raising some excellent questions here, Brad…and I’ve saved the article about screen reading to my Pocket (http://getpocket.com/) to read for later (I’m a little worried about what I am going to read, to be honest).
Being the devil’s advocate is a great place to be. I think that it is easy to get swept away in the bells and whistles of the latest trends in education and even fear mongering to some degree (if you don’t do THIS one thing, you students will suffer tremendously); but what does the RESEARCH actually say about certain tools? What actually impacts student learning in a meaningful way?
These are valid questions that I hope you can explore in some way!