Blended Learning in Room 45...so far.

Recently the district I teach in has decided to implement Blended Learning. My first thoughts when I heard the news were, "Great, but how can I do Blended Learning with 2 classroom computers and one computer lab to share with a whole school?"

  The process that I've used to answer that question has a been a slow but rewarding one.

I started where I start every year, by trying to beg, barter and steal more technology.  Eventually I was able to get two hand-me-down laptops and one of my own to use in my classroom. I was able to locate one additional class computer from a non-tech savvy teacher at my school as well.  Bonus! This gave me 6 classroom computers which I could house in my classroom and use for a rotation model without having to fight for computer lab time.

My next step was setting up an edmodo.com account.  As usual, my class loved the opportunity to interact in and outside of the classroom in a 'facebook-like' fashion.  The really great news is that edmodo has a new function called 'snaphot' which is an easy way for me to assign quizzes based on common core standards in a PARCC-style format.  The snapshot feature gave me an easy way to start getting a rotation model going during my math block.  I normally set this up by having 6 groups of students go through 4 station rotations.

• The first station is group practice of what we've been doing in class i.e. a collaborative poster or group completion of a worksheet of practice problems.  
• Station 2 is with me.  I normally use an 'I do, We do, You do' model with a more challenging application of the standard we're working on in class. 
• The third station is a partner game designed to give students a fun and challenging game for practicing and discussing math strategies related to our learning in class. 
• The fourth station is to rotate to the computers for the edmodo snapshot quiz. (Students who finish the quiz before it's time to rotate can get on sumdog.com.  They love this site!  I have my class set up for math, although you can also do reading or writing I believe.

Lately, I've been using schoology.com to get even deeper into my implementation of Blended Learning in my 'advanced reading group'.  It's a work in progress but definitely proving to be exciting and engaging for a group that loves to extend their understanding of topics further than the classroom setting.  I even have a couple students that like to get on from home and get a 'headstart' on the learning for the next day! I am excited to keep learning about Blended Learning and see how useful it can be in my classroom.  My next mission is to become an experienced screen caster!  Wish me luck :(