Hi Everyone,
I think Mylan, Jo, and Kara all had good points, so I will just add some additional thoughts.
#2 – The biggest benefit for me is increased flexibility and differentiated learning opportunities. It is a lot easier to offer students choice when they are using computers. As well, I think it helps to increase the amount of “professional” written communication between my students. I realized that many of my students have no where to learning collegial writing. Writing to a teacher is not the same as writing to a peer and it’s a skill that blended learning makes much more authentic to learn.
#3 – The big downside for me is equity. Blended learning makes assumptions about the availability to computers and Internet both in the classroom and at home. This year, I have one student who openly admits that she does not have internet at home (and probably a few who didn’t admit it to me) and its inappropriate for me to insist that she travel to the library to complete her homework. As well in situations where the amount of classroom time is inflexible (K-12) it is important that we not use blended learning to extend the amount of work in the classroom. I am lucky because since I teach in a computer lab I can use blended learning techniques as part of my instructional time, but there are many classes where that is not possible.
#4 – I am really lucky in that I teach entirely in a computer lab so blended approach works really well in my classes. I am excited to learn new and more effective means of blending my teaching in this course. I am especially interested in exploring approaches that pull out of the online world back into the face-2-face classroom as interpersonal communication is something I always like to work on with my students.
Sincerely,
Lisa
