How can I use online or blended learning as a teacher? How could either of these options enhance the learning experience of my students. How can I change my pedagogy to use technology to change and enhance student learning? Diana Oblinger and Brian Hawkins argue that if teachers implement technology to enhance a presentation, but everything else about the lesson remains the same, the learning will not change.
All of these questions are floating around in my head while trying to plan a blended learning opportunity. My groups members (Benita Struik and Megan Weisbrod) and I began by trying to come up with an idea of a class we could use for this blended learning assignment. We all teach different subjects and different ages of students so we needed something that would be useful for everyone. What we came up with is not a class from the Saskatchewan Curriculum but more of a resource package on social justice using the blended learning model that could be accessed across grades and subject areas.
I’m not entirely sure how this will look yet. Any suggestions and/or feedback is welcome. We thought we would offer three modules:
- What is Social Justice?
- Types of Social Justice – Global Issues
- Get Involved – Local Issues – What can you do?
Although our plan is for these modules to be used by anyone, we will be planning with our students in mind. We all teach at risk, disengaged students, from lower income families.
So far, we are thinking of using Google Classroom as our platform. I have never used any blended learning platform at all so I would like to do a little more research to see if it is the best one for our needs.
The module I am going to plan is ‘What is Social Justice.’ I have ideas on how to I would teach this in a face-to-face model, and even how I could use technology to improve engagement, but I’m having trouble imagining how I will my implement the instruction part with a video or podcast, and how this would further engage or increase learning. Any ideas and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.