Learning and Teaching with Virtual Learning Environments
Helena Gillepsie, Helen Boulton, Alison Hramiak, Richard Williamson.
ISBN: 978 84445 076 3 Published 2007 by Learning Matters
Chapter 2 - Teaching and learning using a VLE - blending face-to-face and online learning
By the end of this chapter you should be able to:
- understand the concept and core principles of blending face-to-face and online learning;
- identify what methods of learning delivery suit your pupils best;
- analyse current courses and classroom sessions and determine how using more online blended approaches can better meet the needs of you and your pupils;
- design, develop and implement online starters and plenaries;
- construct and use online peer-to-peer assessment techniques;
- develop and implement ways of using online learning in the classroom and also in the homes of your pupils;
- develop ways of getting parents involved with the online teaching and learning of their children.
This chapter addresses the following Professional Standards for QTS: I Q4, Q7, Q9, Q10, Q12, Q19, Q21, Q23, Q25
Introduction
Blended learning is not a new concept, and there are many definitions of blended learning to be found on the internet and elsewhere. What is new are the technological innovations that currently and constantly bombard education in schools, and offer increasingly innovative and ever greater opportunities for blending the teaching and learning in schools. In a blended learning environment, your pupils have access to ICT -based and online learning, and are able to draw on web-based materials in a flexible, if structured, way, to complement
the more traditional face-to-face activities. It is this structuring of blended learning that is described here. (See also Chapter 3 on learning objects and Chapter 4 on using a VLE, for additional information and examples of blending online learning in schools.)
The section on useful websites at the end of this chapter has examples of the different definitions of blended learning that are out there. The Epic website (www.epic.co.uk) also has some extremely useful White Papers on blended learning that can be downloaded free, and which give lots of very useful background information on the subject.
Blended learning can mean a number of different things to different people. In this chapter, however, blended - sometimes called integrated - learning is defined as a mixture or combination of face-to-face and online teaching and learning activities, resources and methods to create a particular blend of learning for your pupils.
Blended learning is closely linked to the national strategy for education in schools, in which the intention is to provide a range of off- and online support for teachers and for their continuing professional development (DfES, 2005). This approach to learning enables the learner to make informed choices about which materials to use and when to use them, that is, to construct a blend that is best for them. The intention of this chapter, then, is to mirror this type of blended learning for use with your pupils in schools.
The chapter explores the ways and means by which blended learning can be implemented in schools, using the current, 'traditional', three-part lesson plan structure of starter, main activities and plenary to illustrate the different ways in which this can be done. Online peer- to-peer assessment in and out of the classroom is also discussed as a way to blend learning. There are examples of how you can get parents involved by giving ideas for online learning at home.
Each section contains explanations and examples of how to implement blended learning solutions in your own teaching practice, with real-life examples and ideas, including examples of case studies, illustrating how this is already being done in schools, and which are intended to help you achieve this with your own pupils.
REFLECTIVE TASK
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How would you define blended learning for the teaching you are doing or have done on teaching practice?
Would blended learning fit in better with the ethos or available resources of any of the schools where you have done your teaching practice?
Online starter activities
The use of an online starter activity is a fairly straightforward introduction to starting to blend learning in your teaching practice. Starter activities tend to be short, usually fewer than 10 minutes, and the more interesting they are, the more interested the students are likely to be in the rest of your lesson. You could use an online activity to get the lesson off to a good start, and also to set an appropriate pace for the lesson that is tailored for the pupils in your class.
Online starter activities can also be easily differentiated to cater for the individual needs of all learners in your group, because of the flexibility of the online medium and the array of resources available to you. Examples of activities that can be conducted online are as follows.
The following idea for a starter activity for any subject at any level is one that can be differentiated for different levels of pupils, and also adapted to suit the different key stages, and the different subjects within them. It is also one which could easily be further developed to create a much longer, more involved piece of work or activity. You can ask your pupils to compare the efficacy of the different search engines available to you in your school, for example, Google or MSN.com, and compare the searching abilities of these two engines.
The idea is to pick a topic or specific words, for example, the causes of the Second World War, or the life cycle of plants, or reviews of a particular poem or book on their reading list- something that they are currently studying in class - and get them to use different search engines to find out what they can. You could split them into groups, one search engine per group, and ask them to feed back after five to ten minutes on what they have found, number of sites, information on those sites and so on. This could also be done as individuals, and as such can be differentiated for learning ability. More able pupils could be given more complex topics to search for, or be given more than one engine to use, and the reverse for lower-ability pupils, thus ensuring that all are able to complete the task at least to a certain extent. The specific details of the activity need to be tailored to meet the needs of your pupils, and to fit in to the time you have allotted for the activity at the start of the lesson. As with any new activity or resource, it is advisable to test this out yourself before asking your pupils to do it in class.
While this type of task does lend itself to a starter activity, it can also be extended and developed into a more substantial research task for project work, and this will be discussed in later sections of this chapter.
Another idea for comparison of search engines would be to use specific children's search engines.
- Ask Jeeves For Kids at www.askforkids.com/ is a unique service where you enter a question, and Ask Jeeves tries to point you to the right web page that provides an answer. On this site, answers have been vetted for appropriateness, and no site that is on the CyberPatrol block list is supposed to be listed. Also, if Ask Jeeves cannot answer a question, it pulls results from various search engines in its metacrawler mode.
- There is also KidsClick! at www.kidsclick.org/ which is backed by librarians, and which lists about 5,000 websites in various categories.
- Try also Looksmart's Kids Directory at http://search.netnanny.com/?pi=nnh3&ch=kids. This is a listing of over 20,000 pupil-friendly websites that have been hand-picked by employees of Looksmart subsidiary Net Nanny and vetted for quality. This site also offers a safe search of the entire web, using Net Nanny Software to filter Wisenut search results, as well as a free toolbar that uses the same service.
- There is also a version of the Yahoo search engine for children, Yahooligans, at www.yahooligans.com/. This is designed for children aged 7 to 12. Sites are hand-picked to be appropriate for children. Also, unlike normal Yahoo, searches will not bring back matches found by crawling the web, if there is no match from within the Yahooligan listings. This prevents possibly objectionable sites from slipping onto the screen. Also, adult-oriented banner advertising will not appear within the service.
Other examples of online starter activities include the following.
- Recap on previous learning by listing words relating to the topic covered in the last class on the board, and then get the pupils to use combinations of two words from the list, in Google or the preferred search engine, to see who can get the fewest websites returned from the search. This can be adapted to allow the more able pupils to move on from this and to enter their own combination of (permissible) words to see who can get the fewest websites returned; for example, try, 'conkers + slide rule'.
- You could put a specific website address on the board for pupils to see when they enter the classroom. and ask them to search that web site for certain pieces of information - maybe a list of words, or a specific topic within the site - and discuss this with the whole group at the end of the activity.
- Try also www.puzz/emaker.com to create word searches and cryptograms for starter activities for a variety of subjects and key stages (see Chapter 4 for more of this type of site).
- Use the VLE to create and conduct a quiz for use as a starter in class. This is easily adapted for all key stages, as you could choose a variety of topics for different ages, depending on the subject you are teaching and the age group you are teaching it to. See Chapter 6 for more detailed information on the use of online assessment techniques.
CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY
In a large inner-city school which currently runs the new ICT Diploma in Digital Applications (DiDA) qualification at Key Stage 4, the following is used as a starter activity in class. All pupils are given a specific website address (URL) and asked to find specific pieces of information on that website that will help them with their individual project work for example, the Edexcel website for the DiDA from www.edexce/.co.uk). Differentiation is achieved by asking pupils to find more or less pieces of infor- mation in their search of the site, depending on their ability and the requirements for their coursework. Pupils are also required to feed back to the class to share their findings as well as including the results in their work.
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
Review the face-to-face classroom starter activities that you use on your teaching practice, and decide which, if any, could be done online.
Design and try out an online starter activity.
Can it be used in your other classes, and if so, how?
REFLECTIVE TASK
Think about why you want to convert a specific part of a lesson from a face-to-face activity to an online one.
Will converting this task or activity to an online one actually enhance the learning for the students?
Online learning in the main part of the lesson
Having described a number of ways in which the start of the lesson can be transferred to an online setting, we move now to the 'middle' section of the lesson. It is not necessary to convert the whole lesson to online tasks and activities, and it is important to remember that a balance is required for all lessons (see the section on 'Getting the balance right' later in this chapter). What is given in this section are examples of ways in which parts of the main body of the lesson can be transferred to online activity.
Many subjects have project work that can easily lend itself to online learning; for example, where the internet is used as a resource for research activities. Pupils could be asked to work in groups, or pairs, to produce virtual archives for the subject they are researching, and then to present their findings to the whole class. The internet need only be one of a variety of sources for the information that they assemble and collate in a virtual archive. The power of the internet here is that it gives pupils access to a wider range of sources than has previously been possible. Not only does it provide pages of information on topics, but it may also open doors by providing avenues to other sources of information that students may not have considered before.
For example, pupils could create a virtual archive of documents and artefacts relating to a scientific discovery, such as penicillin, or the periodic table. Using the internet to search for information relating to such topics opens up scientific and historical, possibly even biographical, avenues through which to explore and add context to these discoveries. Any subject is less boring if peppered with anecdotal type evidence, and with stories of the human interactions involved with them. Adding context in this way also adds variety and interest to the facts that are being taught. Think of how much more interesting the First World War could be if you can find propaganda posters, rations lists, tales from actual battles, and so on, things that can put the facts into a more real-life context.
For revision lessons towards the end of the academic year (which also usually coincides with the end of your second teaching practice) there are a number of online alternatives to face- to-face teaching and learning strategies. The BBC website produces a vast array of revision aids (see www.bbc.co.uk/schoois/revision) on its schools section of the site. Here you can get revision aids for all key stages, and all subjects, with sections for parents and pupils, and also games and quizzes to aid revision.
Another way to blend learning in your practice is to take your pupils to a gallery or museum which uses interactive ICT resources for displays and exhibitions. The website www.mda.org.uk/vimp/, for example, has a huge list of museums with details of what you can expect when visiting them, and it might be worth considering this as part of your practice. The Eureka museum in Halifax, West Yorkshire, for example, is one such place. It offers curriculum-focused galleries (linking with the National Curriculum, QCA guidelines and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects for ages 0-11) that can be used to extend and complement a number of curriculum themes.
Other museums offer virtual reality experiences; for example, the Leighton Linslade Virtual Museum at www.leighton-museum.org.uk/ offers a virtual museum tour of its galleries with facilities for adding to the visitors' book when you've finished your virtual tour.
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
How can you give pupils access to an appropriate knowledge base, giving them some choice in how and when to learn?
How will you receive feedback on their progress?
How you will present new knowledge in a blended learning environment? What will be the key components of the lessons you teach?
Online peer-to-peer assessment
In this section, a number of ideas for the use of blended learning as part of a strategy to encourage peer-to-peer assessment in pupils are explored. These ideas are intended to provide a starting point only from which to create your own learning objects and activities in order to conduct peer-to-peer assessment with your own classes.
Discussion forums can be used for collaborative learning (see Chapter 4 for further details on how this can be done) and this idea can be built upon to blend peer-to-peer assessment into the classroom experience. The forums, or discussion boards (accessed via the school VLE), can act as a repository for work that you want pupils to assess and comment on, and this can be their work, or examples of more formal, referenced content, relevant to their particular course. In order to enable students to become more relaxed about this type of assessment, you might, for example, start with their assessment of formal curriculum-based information, such as exam work.
For example, you could put three exam questions onto the discussion board or forum in three separate threads. (An alternative way would be to create three separate discussion boards for the questions - it's up to you which you think might be best for your pupils.) Having set up an area - the threads - where pupils can access the questions, get them to answer each question, using messages posted for each of the threads, and make sure they pay particular attention to the marks available, and take care to answer the questions using the best strategy for the question. Strategies for answering the questions could be conducted using the interactive electronic whiteboard (IWB) as a whole-class discussion before they start the online activity.
After they have answered the questions online, get them to mark the answers posted by two other students in the class, commenting on: how they picked up the marks; where extra marks could have been picked up; and how well their strategy for answering the question actually suited the question. For example, you could get them to comment on whether or not their peers used 'over-wordy' language, and if they can match the number of points raised to the marks available, and so on.
Following on from this exercise, you could then give the pupils an area of the curriculum to study, and from which they have to set their own questions and upload them as different threads to the discussion boards. Working in groups, for example, the pupils could set questions and make up the answers, for their allotted curriculum area, deciding how many marks should be given for each one. The questions could be uploaded to the discussion boards, as different threads, and students asked to complete two other sets of questions, which have been set as different threads, as before, and receive feedback from the person who set the question, in the same way that they did for the exam questions.
From this, each pupil could then create a learning/revision resource based on their preferred learning style, and based on the feedback gained from the peer-to-peer assessment. If each group or pupil covers a different area of the curriculum, when all the work has been completed, it could be assembled in a specific area on the VLE. The end result is a resource that covers the curriculum for a whole unit, for example, that can be used by all pupils to aid
learning. This is not an activity for a single lesson - as is obvious from the amount of work
that can be involved - nor does it have to take up all or most of every lesson. It could be developed to span a half or full term's work on a particular unit or part unit of a course, giving pupils a more longitudinal task that relates to the teaching and learning over an extended period of time. How you chose to use an activity such as this depends on the individual requirements of your pupils.
The feedback given and received as part of the process of creating this online resource, through the peer-to-peer assessment, can be done as part of the face-to-face teaching and learning and thus blended with the ongoing online work. The IWB is one way in which you can blend the online and face-to-face peer-to-peer assessment, and which also still requires students to use the technology available to them. Pupils can provide feedback on the IWB which can then be stored electronically and uploaded to the discussion boards for later use. For homework, for example, you could ask the students to look at the feedback uploaded from the IWB and comment on it by posting feedback on the discussion boards, or by presenting their thoughts to the class the next time they meet.
CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY
A large comprehensive school in the east of England has recently set up a VLE to replace their old intranet in order to enhance the ICT facilities available to staff and pupils alike from home. In addition to having access to the resources that were available on the old intranet. the system is interactive and allows a live and real-time communication between staff and pupils about their course work, revision, homework and general studies. Different departments are able to personalise the system to suit their individual departmental needs, and the control of updating and uploading course information and materials lies with each department. This is intended to speed up the process of getting the resources on to the system, and allows each department a greater range of which resources they are able to use with their pupils.
Getting parents involved - blending at home as well as in the classroom
In addition to blending learning in your classroom, you should also consider ways in which you can set online work that is to be done at home. Online 'homework' could be structured so that it involves only the individual pupil, or possibly pupils working in groups (see Chapter 4), or could involve pupils and their parents. The initial step when considering how to create a blend that involves online homework is to determine whether or not this is feasible for your pupils. You can only set this type of work if all pupils have access to a computer at home. If this is the case, there are a number of ways in which you might extend work done in the classroom to beyond the school boundaries.
Internet searches can be done as a joint effort between pupil and parent, and you may even wish to give pupils and parents differentiated words or topics to search for together. Some examples of internet-resourced learning across a number of subjects are as follows:
- Internet resources used to support project work on the First World War in Year 9 history lessons, bringing to life the facts through war posters and paintings.
- Work on geography topics such as specific countries, for example, Brazil and Italy, again in Year 9, and also rivers and flooding, in Year 8, with access to fabulous pictures of the topography and culture of the country being studied.
- In classics, internet resources can be used to support individual research on Roman life topics with Year 10 pupils, with illustrations of Roman artefacts being offered for sale at an online auction.
- In science, internet resources support the work on the solar system with Year 9 classes, and also work on ecosystems in Year 12.
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
Set up searches for one of your placement classes - set up searches for the same topics at different
levels for the different year groups and evaluate their effectiveness,
Review some source materials for your subject having done some research yourself into the information; available to you - is it better than you could have produced yourself?
REFLECTIVE TASK
What do you think are the main issues for your classes and pupils when conducting internet searches? How can you structure and focus internet-based resource activities to ensure that your pupils get the most from them in the least time?
Another idea is to set up a live 'chat' session for pupils and parents to join in from home. This could be used to discuss the course or topic itself, or to get parents involved in the subject more by giving their experiences of working in that area, for example. You might be able to get pupils whose parents work in specific industries, such as science or business and so on, to join a chat session and talk about their experiences in the 'real' world.
In a similar way, you could set up discussion boards for pupils and parents and ask that each pupil and parent add messages to the board to stimulate or continue discussions started in class.
Also, if the school has an intranet that can be accessed from home, you might consider setting up an area so that parents are able to monitor the progression of their child or (children in the subjects they are taking with you through access to the school site. )
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL
Find out about the intra net or VLE facilities available to you in the school.
Can you use them to set up online tasks for homework as described above?
If so, how will you do this and what will you set up with the different classes that you teach?
Online plenaries
There are a number of different ways in which the face-to-face plenary activities or tasks can be converted into online ones. Like starters, plenaries are fairly short activities or tasks, usually fewer than 10 minutes in duration, and like starter activities they are a good starting point for your introduction to blending face-to-face with online learning.
Plenary activities usually involve a review of learning with the whole group, and can often take the form of a question-and-answer (O/A) session, with you directing questions as necessary, depending on the relative progress of specific students. The online medium is a useful tool for reviewing or recapping the learning done within a particular lesson, to check what you (and they) have covered in class. It can also be used as an interesting and inter- active tool to check if your pupils have understood what has been taught,
Quizzes are one way to convert a face-to-face O/A session into the online medium. This can
take the form of a quiz done on the white board with the whole class, or you could get pupils to log on to a specific quiz site and complete the questions as individuals. If the school has its own VLE, you could construct your own quiz for particular lessons and use it for formative assessment as you work through the syllabus with your pupils.
The internet has a wealth of information on online quizzes that can be used for teaching in schools. These include the following.
- www.schoo/history.co.uk/teachers/p/enaries.htm/ has information and ideas for all key stages and also a specific section for teachers with ideas for starters and plenaries in history.
- www.channe/4.com//earning/teachers/websites/ has a variety of websites for use by teachers and pupils, and includes interactive activities aimed at stimulating and engaging students of a wide range of abilities and levels.
- www.quia.com has a collection of shared online activities and quizzes in more than 150 categories, and provides a variety of services for educators which include tools for creating different types of online activities.
· One other major resource for plenary activities is the BBC website (at www.bbc.co.uk/schoo/s!) which has a 'bitesize' section for providing revision aids for the subjects in the different key stages.
It also has a particularly colourful interactive games section for schools, www.bbc.co.uk/schoo/s/
games, which allows you to pick a combination of subject and age range and then take a quiz in a topic of your choice.
The above list is not exhaustive; rather, it should be used as a starting point for research into the type of tools that best suit the way you want to teach and which you can adapt for your pupils.
If your school has a VLE and if it is using web logs, or blogs, with pupils, then another example for a plenary activity would be to give pupils five to ten minutes at the end of a lesson to record their thoughts and progress for the topic you have just taught in their own personalised blog. This may be more useful for the later key stages, and is also a useful way to get pupils to become more independent reflective learners. Chapter 7 has details on blogs for schools.
CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY
A large inner-city comprehensive school in the north of England uses web logs with Year 12 and 13 students at Key Stage 5. The students are required to produce their project work as a website, and to record their progress in the form of a blog, and they are given time to do this in school. They are also able to update their blog from home through the school's VLE system.
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
Review the face-to-face classroom plenaries that you use on your teaching practice, and decide which, if any, could be done online.
Design and try out an online plenary.
Review and evaluate the websites available for creating online quizzes and also those that provide ready-made ones.
Which ones are most applicable to your teaching practice?
REFLECTIVE TASK
Did your online plenary work better than a similar activity that was done face to face? If so, why, and if not, why not - how could you have done it better?
Getting the balance right
Most adults find it difficult to sit at a computer and work alone for extended periods of time without a break. This is something that is even harder for pupils to do, and something which needs to be taken into account when blending the face-to-face learning with individual online learning tasks. Online activities should be broken up with other methods of teaching and learning. Any good teacher deploys a range of resources, techniques and methods in any one lesson in order to stimulate learning, and this is no different for blending online with face-to-face teaching and learning. Getting the balance right is something that takes practice, and may be very different for the different groups that you teach. Chapter 7 has further details on this aspect of blended learning.
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
When thinking about how to blend face-to-face with online teaching and learning, that is, when considering how to construct a blend for your pupils, you need to try to answer the following questions:
· Who are the learners (key stage, level, age) and will they need to change their attitudes in order to embrace online learning?
· What is the culture of the school and will this need to change and adapt?
· What new strategies, pedagogical issues, procedures or techniques do you need to learn to do this? . How much time do you have for planning and preparing this and do the learners have enough time to complete the tasks you have set?
· How well do your blends, your online tasks, fit in with the scheme of work and lesson plans for the syllabus your students are following?
· Do you have the resources available to you and to them for what you are trying to achieve?
Issues with online learning
We all know children who can spend hours playing computer games, but how many of us know children who can concentrate for so long at school? The quality of the online materials that you use in class is important, and you need to ensure that it is interesting and exciting enough to hold the attention of the pupils for whatever tasks you have set them to do. Make sure you review any online materials before you use them in class, as pupils have a low tolerance of materials that fall short of the ones they can get on their video games. With this kind of medium, learners will expect to be entertained while learning and are unlikely to respond to anything less. Research into this area has revealed a number of aspects of learning through gaming technology that you may be able to exploit (see www.futurelab.org.uk). Strategies for use of the internet as a resource like this need to be very specific and focused in order to avoid the problem of pupils getting lost trying to find the information
they need, or getting distracted by banners offering other services. Pupils may require more intervention from you to enable them to discern and extract relevant information from online sources than would have been the case in face-to-face textbook-type lessons (Deaney et ai, 2006).
You also need to be sure that when they do use search engines to find web sites containing useful information, that information is pitched at the right level and is accessible to them. It can take as long to look through a search engine list as it does to look up index entries in a book. To be successful, information-seeking activities within the classroom need to be very clearly structured and focused.
Parental involvement
One issue with parental involvement in online learning is that of the hardware and software differences in the homes of your pupils. For pupils who live in homes without broadband connections, there may be an issue of access with this kind of homework if they are using the telephone line for long periods of time. Another issue with parental involvement is that of the computer skills of the parents, resulting in even the most minor of technical faults possibly being barriers to the access to the computer for the pupils. Issues of access need to be monitored in this way so as not to cause problems for the pupils when setting this type of work (Boulton, 2006).
There are additional management issues that also need to be considered when planning to use online technology in your lessons. You will need to think about:
- which classrooms you can use with the appropriate technology already there;
- whether or not you can use the ICT rooms on a regular basis for your teaching;
- how to plan teaching for the different layouts that often accompany these rooms;
- what changes you may need to make to your own teaching style and the pedagogical methods you usually deploy when teaching using mainly ICT;
- whether there are adequate technical backup and resources for the activities you have planned; . whether or not your own understanding and skills of the resources you are going to use are adequate for what you are trying to do.
REFLECTIVE TASK
Are you up to the tasks you have set with ICT - do you need further training? What are the gaps in your own knowledge and how will you address them?
Think about how you will engage the pupils and ensure that the goals are clear to them.
Think about how you will evaluate the online teaching and learning strategies, activities and tasks that you use.
RESEARCH SUMMARY RESEARCH SUMMARY
Recent research indicates that teachers draw on the wide range of internet resources available to broaden classroom resources and references to bring the reality of the outside into the classroom (Deaney et ai, 2006). This research also indicates that a concern for teachers is that of offering a balance between offering learners more security but risking similar task outcomes, and providing opportunities for greater independence but risking pupil confusion about task requirements (Deaney et al, 2006). Hence the need to balance the online and face-to-face activities, and to balance control with structure, with allowing for flexibility and individuality in pupils. The need for differentiated tasks is also indicated as a requirement by many teachers for this kind of pupil activity (Deaney et ai, 2006). Ways of differentiating the various activities and tasks have been provided throughout this chapter in order to offer ways to alleviate this potential problem.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
This chapter has presented a number of strategies and ideas for blending face-to-face and online learning in schools.
There are a number of practical ways in which this can be done, and examples of these have been offered as a way forward for you to try in your schools during teaching practice.
There is no right or wrong way to do this, and thus the best way forward is to start to blend your teaching activities, try them on your pupils, and evaluate them through reflective iterative practice, until you find what works for you with your pupils.
What next?
From here you could adapt your teaching methods to incorporate more online learning strategies, tasks and activities and move on to integrating these within a virtual learning environment, or the school intranet (see Chapter 4 for further details of how this can be done).
Useful websites
Some definitions of blended learning can be found at the following websites.
- An increasingly popular combination of online and in-person, classroom learning activities.
www. cybermediacreations. com / e learning / glossary. htm - An educational formation that integrates e-learning techniques including online delivery of materials through web pages, discussion boards and/or email with traditional teaching methods including lectures, in-person discussions, seminars, or tutorials. www.teach-nology.com/glossary/terms/b/
- Learning or training events or activities where e-learning, in its various forms, is combined with more traditional forms of training such as 'classroom' training. www.intelera.com/glossary.htm
· Using ICT as appropriate alongside traditional methods such as discussion or face-to-face teaching. www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/It-9lossary.htm
· Blended learning is the combination of multiple approaches to teaching or to educational processes which involve the deployment of a diversity of methods and resources or to learning experiences which are derived from more than one kind of information source. Examples include combining technology-based materials and traditional print materials, group and individual study, structured pace study and self-paced study, tutorial and coaching. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Blended_learning
- Website with resources and advice for teachers: www.gamelearning.net, also, reviews of games and learning can be found at www.futurelab.org.uk/research/lit_reviews
Also:
- www.epic.co.uk is a very useful site with lots of free downloadable reports on e-learning and blended learning - a site worth exploring for background information on this topic.
- www.teach-nology.com/ also has a range of free and easy-to-use resources for teachers with lesson plans, worksheets, games and tips, and also a space to share your online ideas with other teachers.
- www.terry-freedman.org.uk is a site set up with lots of practical advice and articles for educationalists. http://stiveshas/emere.com/mgb/Coming_of_age.pdf is a very comprehensive online book - Coming of age: an introduction to the new world wide web - of case studies and how-to articles edited by Terry Freedman, and contributed to by leading practitioners in the world of education. The book also has a very useful glossary.
- http://elgg.net is an open-source personal learning landscape for users and developers of e-learning. The emphasis of the site is focused very much on the learner, and on communities of learners, aiming to give them the means to control and own their own development and growth through the use of everyday web technologies.
REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES
Boulton, H (2006) Managing e-learning: What are the real implications for schools? Nottingham Trent University.
Deaney, R, Ruthven, K and Hennessey, S (2006) Teachers developing 'practical theories' of the contribution of information and communication technologies to subject teaching and learning: an analysis of cases from English secondary schools, British Educational Research Journal, 32, 459- 480.
DfES (2005) Harnessing technology: transforming learning and children's services. London:
Department for Education and Skills.
FURTHER READING FURTHER READING FURTHER READING FURTHER READING Bloxham, S, Twiselton, S and Jackson, A (2005) Challenges and opportunities: Developing learning
and teaching in ITE across the UK. ESCalate ITE Project. St Martin's College, Lancaster, ESCalate. Facer, K (2005) Could computer games help to transform the way we learn?, Visi.on (Issue 1).
Futurelab, at www.futurelab.org.uk
