Reflection and Change

As the end of the year fast approaches I'm starting to find myself thinking about changes to make for my classes next year. One of the wonderful aspects of teaching is that we get the chance to bring each year to an end, reflect, and make changes for the coming year.

One big change for me this next year (aka this summer) is that I'm going to start experimenting with blended learning and/or flipped learning. I'm leaning more towards the blended learning model. Essentially, in blended learning the teacher makes learning resources such as video class lectures, presentations, online activities, texts, and worksheets available to students online and/or on a disk so that students can learn using digital resources both at home and in the classroom.

In the flipped learning model these resources are made available so that students do a lot of the one-direction, receptive learning on their own to make room for more interactive, hands-on activities in the classroom. I particularly like the flipped learning model because it doesn't make sense to me to spend our classroom time together on lots of one-way communication that can be done outside of the classroom with the aid of technology. I believe that face-to-face interactive learning as a community should be the focus of class time. This is also what most students truly desire, and can't truly be done on your own at home with a computer.

While I like the flipped learning model there are a few problems with fully implementing it at this time. The biggest challenge right now is that not all students have access to computers and the internet at home. One solution, at least as far as videos are concerned, is to burn copies of the videos onto DVDs so that students can view them at home. Of course, computer labs are usually available to students before school, at lunch, and after school, but with students' busy schedules, activities, and/or transportation to and from school this can still be problematic.

Some districts provide one-to-one computing in which every student is provided either a laptop or a tablet. I think that this would certainly be nice- especially when you consider that pretty much all university students are expected to have their own technology, but every district has to weigh the pros and cons. First of all, it's quite an expensive endeavor. Where will the funding come from? What can be cut, and/or where can new funding come from? Perhaps partnerships can be made with private companies, but what types of pressure would that put on public school systems? Moreover, while technology can be very interesting for kids (or even deadly boring, of course) is it really more effective than more traditional methods or even hands-on projects? Research doesn't seem to show great gains in learning because of technology, but I would argue that if it is used well it can help keep students engaged, and it can also allow for more flexibility in teaching and learning.

My greatest fear is that some people may believe that teachers can simply be replaced by technology. I believe that this is highly erroneous because it is the human connection and relationship that is the most effective in creating conscientious and caring citizens. Sure, motivated students can certainly learn a lot on their own (there are quite a few examples of some amazing autodidacts throughout history), and technology can help them do that. But, technology should be used to free up more time to create, sustain, and develop those relationships so that we and our students will learn to be better people and create better communities instead of just creating more and more "technological islands" and divisions. We are much more than simply numbers or cogs in the machine.