How Can I Apply It?

How Can I Make My Classroom A Blended Classroom?

      A blended classroom, for me, yeah right, or so I thought.  As a new teacher, I had no idea what blended learning was.  I cannot recall a time in college where the term was ever used.  When I was asked to participate in this course, I just figured it would be a neat experience and maybe give me a few ideas on how to incorporate some technology in my classroom.  One of other biology teachers has a set of laptops and truthfully, I was pretty jealous of the activities she was able to do with her students that I couldn't do unless I signed up a week or two early to get a computer lab.  So, I thought that maybe taking this course would be a way for me to actually get a classroom set of laptops instead of these wonderful 15 DNR donated laptops from 2004 that weigh more than two biology textbooks.

     Once the course began, I really started to get into it.  I began to analyze my teaching style, my students engagement, and often times found myself recreating activities in my mind that I had done previously that would have been more successful if we had done them on the computer.  Oh the plans I have for next year!

     As the school year draws ever so closely to the finish line, I find myself extremely excited.  I'm not excited for summer break, I'm excited to redesign my courses for next year.  I have my fingers crossed, hoping for a classroom set of laptops and from what I am hearing, it is very possible.  At first, I kept thinking that I could upload worksheets to the computer and save paper and ink, but quickly smacked myself in the face for thinking like that!  That isn't what technology is for, that isn't what blending learning is about!  It's about student engagement and empowering them to take control over their own education.  It's about giving them an opportunity to see how something we are discussing applies to their life.  A student who understands how something is relevant to them will be way more engaged than a student who doesn't see any real life application.

     My final project for my ICP students was to select a topic and a scientist and write a research paper and to do a demonstration over that topic.  One of my students, which the only thing he was interested in this year was aggravating me and doing the opposite of what I asked of him, chose to do his final project on Simple Machines.  I recently had purchased a K'Nex kit that has tons of things that could built to show the 6 simple machines.  I started him out doing something small and easy, like a hammer and screwdriver.  As he was working through the kit, he discovered a poster called "Launching Dreams, Building the Future!"  A crew of scientists in a 6 week time frame had constructed a spaceship and moving launch pad out of 40,000+ K'Nex that weighs 180 pounds and stands over 10 feet tall.  He just stared at it in amazement.  He looked at me and said, "Brames, if I could come to school everyday to work on a big project like that, I sure would like school a lot more.  I just hate having to read a book."  It really got me thinking.  These students, who I quickly discovered are very uninterested in school and what we have to teach them, need to do something that makes what they are learning realistic.  I failed him this year.  He has had a blast making simple machines out of K'Nex, he even made a fishing pole and asked if he could use fishing line instead of the string the kit came with because he thought it made more sense.  I have to redesign my classroom so that I can find a way to keep all of my students engaged through projects and self exploration.  If I can give my students a topic and allow them to use whatever resources they are comfortable with, how could they not succeed? 

     Next year will be a new and exciting year for the students who have me in class.  We will be blogging, using websites to organize our thoughts when creating projects, using a variety of presentation tools including creating animated movies that allows the students to showcase what they have learned.  My hope is to prepare my students for their traditional assessment, the Biology ECA by using authentic assessment methods to ensure my students have mastered the content that I have presented them.  If they can apply it to the real world, I'm confident that they have a deeper understanding of the material and can pass any traditional test over the content.