How can blended learning help?
What is blended learning?
Blended learning is the strategic integration of in-person learning with technology to enable whole child support, personalized instruction, and mastery-based progression. It is a mechanism for giving educators, students, and parents the resources they need to deliver on the vision of a highly effective, engaging, and equitable education experience for every child, every day.
Why make the shift?
Educators and school leaders have various motivations and goals for implementing blended learning. While there is no one “right” answer, and indeed educators choose blended models for many purposes, common reasons include: increased student access to resources and tools outside of the boundaries of classroom walls, giving students more voice and choice in their learning, providing more effective data-driven differentiation, and extending the reach of the best teachers. Explore other perspectives from teachers, students, and administrators below.
Teacher Perspective
Education Week, "Blended Learning, Real Teaching"
"To do blended successfully, you really have to trust your students to take ownership and become a part of their own learning in a way that they might otherwise not be doing. … I’ve gotten to know my kids so much better than I ever have in the past. I can tell you not only what they know in science, but I can tell you what are their strengths and weaknesses in literacy. I feel like I’m really teaching my kids. I don’t feel like I’m teaching science anymore — I feel like I teach students.” – Samantha Sherwood, Teacher at Mott Hall V Middle School, New York
Student Perspective
Relay GSE, "Why Blended Learning?"
"I think that blended classrooms are a really cool way to start teaching kids, especially because they’re a newer thing that people are doing — a newer step in education. They’re really helpful in a lot of situations. Every time that I’ve had a class that’s had a blended aspect to it, it’s been a lot more beneficial for me as a learner, and I feel like if other teachers started utilizing this new technology or this new way of teaching, not only would I do better, but I think a lot of kids would do better.” – Lissa, NYC iSchool
Administrator Perspective
The Leaning Accelerator, "The Story of Change at Lovett"
"The idea for all of the wacky things we're doing with instruction now was really born from a need to meet our students' needs. We realized that in any given classroom, our students were at varying levels, and because our students were at varying levels, we found that giving them instruction in one way was just not working for them. We found that some of our students were disconnected from learning – some of our students were discouraged by their own progress because when instruction wasn't tailored to the student, some of our students were left behind. The biggest piece to our model was – how do we give our kids what they need and when they need it?" – Dr. Leviis Haney, Principal at Lovett Elementary School