New to Digital and Blended Learning? Steps To Doing It Right!

Please raise your hand if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the thought of creating a digital learning plan for your school or district.
When you start brainstorm the steps to having a digital learning plan, you’re hit with a blank word document or whiteboard, killing any creative notion you may have felt. Technology integration is daunting enough – never mind putting together a digital learning plan to be shared your school community.
Well, there’s good news: Creating a digital learning plan doesn’t have to be that daunting. With the right set of tools and information at your disposal, you could easily create an engaging digital learning plan — all without hours of research, a huge time investment, or hiring consultants.
We will walk through how to develop a digital learning plan in this series of blog posts. When we’re done you’ll know exactly how to create a digital learning. Ready? Let’s dive in.

Blended and Digital Learning

1. The opportunity to innovate
2. 50% of all high school courses online by 2019
3. The Rise of K-12 Blending Learning
4. Definition of Blended Learning
   1. online learning
   2. supervised brick and mortar location away from home
   3. modalities are connected to provide an integrated learning experience
5. What blended learning is not…
   1. one to one
   2. bring your own device
   3. technology integration
6. What blended learning is…
   1. personalize student learning
   2. different learning needs at different times
   3. student point of entry and progress
7. Why blend?
   1. competency-based learning at scale
   2. overcome current condition of data rich and information poor
   3. formative assessments with immediate real-time interactive feedback
   4. offer learning experiences to students
   5. mastery-based learning
8. The future of assessments
   1. smaller
   2. more frequent
   3. both FOR and OF learning
9. Outcomes of blended learning
   1. grit
   2. perseverance
   3. student agency (students have control over learning and are empowered to learn)
10. Start with pilots
    1. small classroom-level pilots
    2. project-based learning
    3. examine blended learning models
    4. students have more voice and choice
11. Blended Learning Models
    1. Rotation model
       1. station rotation model
       2. lab rotation model
       3. flipped classroom model
       4. individual rotation model
    2. Flex Model:
       1. A course or subject in which online learning is the backbone for student learning. Even if it directs students to offline students. Students move at a customized pace through different learning modalities..
    3. ala Carte Model
       1. A course that a student takes that is entirely online. The course accompanies other experiences of learning. Not a whole school or whole class experience.
    4. Enriched Virtual Model
       1. This is a course or subject where students have required face to face learning and are free to complete to remaining coursework on their own.

Blended Learning Definitions

Consider administering the STNA (School Technology Needs Assessment). http://www.serve.org/stna.aspx – The STNA will give you a benchmark of your technology program. For best results, you may want to take the STNA questions and “customize” them in your district’s lingo.