HYBRID-BLENDED-WEB-FACILITATED LEARNING

The Sloan report on "Blending In", while presenting that there is room for consumer growth in blended learning environments since openness and preference exceeds experience, that academic leaders perceived no higher value of hybrid learning as "the best of both worlds" A more recent article, however, (Demski's "A Better Blend"), irrefutably states a 2009 Department of Education study that found larger advantages of hybrid learning over face to face instruction. Her article describes a teacher who successfully uses class forum discussion on a social networking site as a warm up for face to face conversation.

Bonk makes a nice list of suggestions to address the technology resistance movement, including incremental change, shared success, training and development, just-in-time support, sharing atmospheres, awards/incentives, modeling, etc,etc. It seems to me that blended instruction is just one way to move teachers incrementally from the "technology is isolating" argument.

In my early inquiry last Spring, I spent time talking to a few fabulous high school English teachers in the Bloomington area who had had wide success in using class Nings to collaborate with other classrooms during a War of Vietnam Unit. Central to their model was the forum discussion, and the face to face conversation that followed after the forum discussion. Reflection and engagement, thus, go hand in hand in this new world of learning models . . .