Finishing Up!

Thank you everyone - parents, guardians, and students - for your participation in our blended pilot! Overall,the experience has been extrememly positive. It's also been professionally challenging and exciting for me. Our school will be expanding the pilot next year with junior and senior students.

Today, I sent an email to parents and guardians via Edline asking for feedback about the pilot. If you didn't get the email, you can access the survey by clicking here: survey

While this survey is for parents and guardians, I did collect feedback from students during class. Those who wanted to contributed to this video, which I shared with a large committee of interesed teachers and administrators at a pilot-evaluation meeting in May:



Thanks again for a fantastic year! This has truly been one of the best years of my career, mostly because of YOU, the wonderful students and families.

Rounding the Bend!

This is our last full week of blended learning! In fact, the last optional day will be next Tuesday. For our last unit, Persepolis, we'll be using a class set of books, so you'll need to come every day in order to do your work. You will be working independently, however, so it'll still feel a little bit "blended."

In your reflections this week, most people sounded happy and adjusted to this style of learning. I feel happy and adjusted, too. I am a blended believer at this point, and I'm glad I'll get to continue this type of instruction next school year.

Something I want to get your feedback on, and I might pose this question on this week's End-of-Week Reflection is how you think blended learning could best be introduced at the beginning of the year. What would your ideal blended course look like in terms of schedule, workload, relationships, etc.? Think about this and add your thoughts to this week's end-of-week reflection forums.

Something else that's been happening lately is an erosion of the typical divide between students and teacher. On the one hand, I'm elated about this development! I've spent most of my career trying to find ways to authentically learn WITH students, instead of being just an authority figure and the dominant force in the classroom. On the other hand, some aspects of the walls coming down are making me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I'll probably talk more about this in class; although the idea of talking about it in class makes me feel uncomfortable, too. Oh, teaching. Such a complex and wonderful profession.

Have a great week!

Moodle!

Thanks for your emails about Moodle being down. I also can't sign in. I'm sure the school is working on it, and we'll just have to see what happens.

I'll update you in class today.

We'll adjust the due date of the letters.

My Own Weekly Reflection - Week 4

Last week was a great week for blended. Many commented that class went smoothly. Most of those who'd expressed skepticism in the opening weeks found that they enjoyed last week. It seems we're getting into the rhythm of blended learning!

Of course, this week we're thrown off by AP exams and the media center closings due to GRAD test re-takes. Many of you expressed a high level of stress and anxiety regarding AP testing. I understand that these feelings are real, and that they affect your performance in other areas.

I decided to push back the due date for the research letter to 8:30 Monday morning in response to your reflections. Realistically, I wouldn't have had time to read these over the weekend, anyway. I do want you to have time to comment on each other's drafts, however. You'll now have Monday night and Tuesday to accomplish this. The final letters are due on Wednesday evening, 11:59pm. You'll hand in everything via the Google site. This is a paper-free assignment! A first for me!

This week, we'll be playing with Ning instead of our usual Moodle forums. The Ning is a simulation we're using to address the 21st century skills of play, performance, and networking. Engage fully in the simulation! Your final product for this assignment will be a reflection paper to be handed in the week after next.

One of the things I love about blended is the many types of writing that become relevant and possible. I've often felt that we privilege the literary analysis paper in our department, and I love the opportunity this class affords me to teach about and encourage other genres of academic writing.

I think that's it for this week! Thank you so much for your thoughtful participation in this pilot. I'm having such a good and intellectually stimulating time.

Week 4 Is Here

We're beginning week four of our course! I just finished reading your reflections and Moodle posts, and once again, you have some wonderful insights into what's happening.

Many of you highlighted the part of Blended English that I most enjoy - the smaller class discussions. I predicted this would be a benefit of blended learning, but I did not realize what a difference the smaller class sizes would make in terms of the quality of discussions and my own enjoyment of them. I was very gratified to read that others feel the same way.

I also enjoyed the discussion on busy work in the open forum on Moodle. Many people pointed out examples of what they perceive to be "busy work." The most common alternative people suggested was more discussion. I agree that discussions can be fruitful. However, I often find the students benefit from scaffolding activities (taxonomies, maps, paraphrasing) that prepare them to more thoughtfully discuss. I also have trouble with assessing discussion. Sometimes I need an assignment, besides a test or a paper, that I can put into the grade book.

While we may not totally agree on what constitutes busy work, I hope we can agree that the collaborative nature of the blended course is positive. I have never had a teaching experience quite like this one - where the input and reactions from students are so instrumental in the creation of the course content and instructional methods. I love hearing your opinions!

Per your suggestions this week, we'll discuss clearer grading criteria on Wednesday. There will also be an open-forum again on Moodle. And Michael, my email address, which is available both on Edline and on the Edina High School homepage is katwest@edina.k12.mn.us.

Have a great week!

Heading Into Week Three

Today for the F2F (that's how I'm writing face-to-face now - cool, right?!) session, we had a seminar about gender roles in Ibo culture. Many people had interesting thoughts on this. During the discussions, I kept track of who was participating. I was pleased to note that we were able to get 100% participation in each class, and I want to continue to find ways to do this. Tyler suggested in his weekly reflection that I continue to use the "Wednesday Friends" technique, and maybe incorporate something similar on optional days. I do feel a responsibility to build community, and things like Wednesday Friends kind of help, I think.

During one of the seminars (4th hour, I think), people had questions about the clothing of the Ibo people. I found this great link, but we didn't have time to discuss it.

Many people noted in their weekly reflections that they enjoyed recording their podcasts on Audacity. Today, Mr. Walker and I got together to publish the final products. He and I had a misunderstanding about the format of the segments - I thought we were putting them together in one file, and he thought I wanted to publish them individually as episodes. In the end, I think having them individually is kind of nice, and I think the third graders might enjoy clicking on them one-by-one. There are a few groups that need to publish, still - another benefit of this format is that I can just add them to the feed and they'll appear.

Click here for Fresh Press segments. Click here for iMPRESS. And click here for Hot Paper.

I'm excited about tomorrow's optional session on folktales. I disagreed with Erik's thought (which he posted on Moodle) that Achebe's novel lacks deep meaning. I think the character of Okonkwo is very well developed and extremely complex. I also really like the dispassionate tone and how the impacts of colonialism are left to the reader to "judge." I'm interested to hear people's final opinions on Thursday and Friday.

Another idea I'm thinking through is the concept of "busy work." I always try to avoid what I think of as "busy work" in my classes, blended or not. To me, busy work is work that doesn't require any thought or that is redundant. Brainstorming topics and themes, writing PIEs about complex questions, and responding thoughtfully to others' comments would not qualify as busy work in my mind. Michael, Max, and Alma (and I think one other person in 5th hour?) suggested that they're doing too much busy work. What does busy work mean to you guys? What could you do instead of the things I've assigned to show your deep thinking and understanding about course content? I'm really curious to get more feedback on this.

I also heard from Justin and Erik that they wanted the forums un-grouped so they could interact with other classes. Noted! And fixed for this week!

Wednesday Friends!

Today, during our whole-class discussion I tried to counteract the isolation that can occur in a blended environment by assigning "Wednesday Friends." Together, Wednesday friends worked on vocabulary, discussed the text, and brainstormed topics and ideas in Things Fall Apart in an A to Z taxonomy.

Later, I'll add photos of the taxonomy to this post.

This morning, ER brought me a copy of an interview with Chinua Achebe in the NYT Sunday Magazine. I found the article online here. Check it out! I thought it was interesting how Achebe's voice in the interview is similar to the narrator's voice in the novel.

What did you think about that?