Are We Innovating, or Just Digitizing Traditional

Teaching?
Blended learning has the potential to transform the way teachers
teach and students learn—if we take advantage of all that it
offers.
By Beth Holland
February 22, 2017

© Hero Images/500px

A few months ago, I noticed an increased amount of discussion around the

notion of blended learning. Many of these conversations started on a similar
note: “We’re blended—all of our teachers use Google Classroom” (or
Edmodo, Schoology, Canvas, Moodle, etc.). However, in probing further, I
often discovered that these tools had merely digitized existing content and
classroom procedures.

Instead of filling an inbox on the teacher’s desk with packets and worksheets,
students now completed the exact same procedures online. Rather than write
homework assignments on the board, teachers posted them to the students’
digital news feeds. While blended learning brings with it the promise of
innovation, there is the peril that it will perpetuate and replicate existing
practices with newer, more expensive tools.

THE PERIL
The dissemination of digitized, teacher-driven content is not full blended
learning. Though this can be viewed as a first step toward new models of
learning, the peril lies in complacency. When blended learning is equated with
digital workflow, students remain consumers of teacher-directed content
instead of becoming creators of knowledge within a context that they can
actively control.

THE PROMISE
True blended learning affords students not only the opportunity to gain both
content and instruction via online as well as traditional classroom means, but
also an element of authority over this process. Freeing students from the
confines of the school day, the walls of the classroom, the sole expertise of
the teacher, and the pace of the rest of the class, blended learning could
fundamentally change the system and structure of school, and provide
students with a more personalized, active learning experience.

Last year, I interviewed three instructional coaches from Bellevue,

Nebraska, about their 1:1 iPad initiative (where each student has an iPad) and
their move to blended learning. They described efforts to provide multiple
avenues for students to access content, strategies for using audio and video
to scaffold independent learning, opportunities to adapt instruction based on
real-time data, and the chance to engage in more meaningful face-to-face
conversations. These coaches saw blended learning as providing students
with control over how they learn, the pace of the learning experience, and
where they might choose to learn within the classroom.
Courtesy of Beth Holland

For example, Ann Feldmann (@AnnFeldmann1) described how teachers

might harness the power of screencasting to read and explain content—
allowing students to choose the pace of their learning as well as the mode
through which they experienced the content. To prove that all students can
benefit from these opportunities, Ann’s colleague Jeanette Carlson
(@MrsJCarlson) tweeted the image at left. These kindergartners not only
learned to work independently on an analog task but also leveraged videos to
help them decipher directions and comprehend the material.

At a more advanced level, Jeanette found blended learning particularly helpful

in teaching challenging concepts during her business class. Through
screencasting, she essentially cloned herself, creating a video to walk
students through a difficult task. This blended approach freed her from the
front of the room so that she could work with students on an individual basis
and provide customized instruction.

Ann and Jeanette’s colleague Jeffrey Bernadt (@JeffreyBernadt) elaborated

on the concept and shared how he leveraged blended learning to provide his
high school social studies students with multiple options for acquiring content
knowledge—video, digital text, paper or e-books, or face-to-face conversation.
Instead of requiring students to sit in desks and learn in lockstep, Jeffrey
created an environment where his students could control the path, pace, and
even place of their learning. These examples highlight how students can
engage with blended learning to gain content and instruction, but the coaches
also described how digital tools give students new voice and choice in
demonstrating their learning.

Blended learning can mean a step forward toward something greater—giving

students agency over their own learning, but that is dependent on the
direction chosen by the teacher. In a recent blog post, Will Richardsonraised
the point that educators do not “give” agency to students through choice or
technology or even blended learning. Instead, students acquire it when
teachers “create the conditions under which agency can flourish.”

In a 2013 Christensen Institute report, the authors pose the question: “Is K–
12 blended learning disruptive?” That is, does it create a new definition of
what qualifies as “good”? They argue that to be disruptive, blended learning
needs to replace the existing teacher-directed orientation of school with a
more student-centered model. Blended learning could create a new definition
of teaching and learning (the promise), or it could become nothing more than
a digital version of a traditional notion of school (the peril).

Source: https://www.edutopia.org/article/are-we-innovating-or-just-digitizing-
traditional-teaching-beth-holland