Blended Learning

Although, I have witnessed several forms of blended learning, I have not encountered a lot of it as a student. A form of blended learning that I have done was in a prior English course. At the beginning of the semester we were provided with the courses overall project. The professor had us create a e-portfolio that he would assign a topic for each week and then it would be completed outside of the classroom. The final paper would be an compilation of what was wrote over the course of the semester. The course seemed to be go smooth for me but if it were a math or science course I do not think I would have benefitted from the majority of the content being learned via online. 

One way that blended learning might benefit teachers is by enabling them to integrate many programs into their lessons. There are programs such as ALEKS that can track students mastery in specific courses like math and science to help better understand how each student is understanding the content that is being taught. Students that may be struggling in a specific area can be provided alternate ways to help them in those specific areas. Another excellent approach to address individual needs is to record lessons. This gives students the chance to review any material they may have missed in class or did not understand. 

 

In order to guarantee that all of my students have fair access to resources and technology, I would make sure that the school is giving them that access. If the school was unable to accomplish that, I would make sure that the kids had time during the day to complete the task given to them or spend time doing activities that could help in their understanding of the tasks in the computer lab. I do not see myself giving kids exclusively online tasks as a future teacher who wants to minimize the amount of technology in the classroom. However, I would offer them study materials or games that allow them to practice the material at home on Kahoot!. 

Increasing student screen time in the classroom is absolutely a negative impact on our students. The increase of screen time can create many health issues such as eye strains but also a huge social concern. As an adult, I often get headaches if staring at my screen too long and can only imagine how bad that is for younger individuals. Incorporating hands-on and group projects is crucial for teachers to successfully regulate screen time. To enable them to collaborate with their peers, not all of the lessons should be completed online. Only when students have finished their daily assignments should they be allowed to use screens in the classroom, and only for brief periods of time. We cannot limit the screen time that students have outside of the classroom but we definitely can inside the classroom and that is something that we should absolutely strive to do, especially at an elementary level.