Blended Learning from the Ground Up
Call me cautiously optimistic. Emphasize “cautious.” I hesitate to express all-out enthusiasm for what’s called “blended learning” because right now the term is so often conflated with the term “cost-effective,” a euphemism for “eliminating human jobs and leaving a single teacher in charge of 45-60 high-needs, at-risk students.” As I mentioned in an earlier post, the original vision—still in circulation, as far as I can tell—was that technology would make enormous class sizes possible, in order to offset the initial outlay of money for computers, software and internet access. All I can say about this notion is that it’s clearly a marketing move by tech companies, which they are fully entitled to try, but we are not fully entitled to buy into.
On the other hand, some of what I’m seeing looks very interesting—when it’s done thoughtfully, not from some corporation’s top-down cost-saving idea, and when it’s done with the idea ofenhancing close human relationships, not replacing them. A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to visit Lou Dantzler Middle School, an ICEF charter in South Los Angeles, where they’re now using the blended learning model schoolwide.
What impressed me about the program here was that ICEF is proceeding slowly. Peter Watts, ICEF’s Director of Blended Learning, told me that the system they’re using began with a group of 25 teachers who volunteered to use laptops and iReady software in their classrooms for a year as