Ideas for Incorporating Blended Learning into my Classroom

            One of the goals I have as a reason for making my classroom a blended learning environment is that it gives me the opportunity to provide my students with immediate feedback. I felt that this was an important goal for myself as many students have a bunch of things going on in their lives. Thus, even if I am able to return work students complete the day after they handed it in, many students may have forgotten some of what was discussed in class when they were completing the assignment. Thus, when students are completing an assignment, I want the ability to provide them with instantaneous feedback as this will not only help me see where the students are in terms of grasping different concepts but it also shows them that I care about the work they are doing and can acknowledge that work in real time. One website that I am working on incorporating into my classroom is Pear Deck (https://www.peardeck.com/). I found this website to be very helpful for providing students with immediate feedback as this website allows you to create interactive PowerPoint presentations in which students can make posts and answer polls that show up directly in the PowerPoint in real time. The teacher also has full control over what posts are made public for all students to view allowing the teacher to clear any inappropriate comments. Additionally, the teacher can highlight key responses that they thought were very insightful or added to the discussion. This website is one I would like to learn more about and become more proficient in as it allows me to provide immediate feedback to my students and be more responsive to their needs as learners.

            Another area in which I thought a blended learning model could help further my instruction and benefit my students is through trying out online applications that may help incorporate some aspects of the flipped classroom model. One system I want to try to incorporate into my classroom would be to have students download an app such as the BBC News app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bbc.mobile.news.ww&hl=en) on either their phones or their chromebooks. I feel that using an app such this could help my classroom become a more blended learning environment as students could use the application to analyze and learn more about issues that are happening in the world today while at home and during a time that works best for them. Then when the students come into class the next day, the students and myself could work together to form past/present connections.

            Finally, I want to see how blended learning has an effect on attendance, particularly when we try and incorporate different blended learning styles. I am curious to see how a blended learning environment can effect attendance as getting students use to learning in a blended classroom may be a new experience for them. Thus, I want to see how incorporating different systems will effect the students and know how to make any changes that need to be made in order to keep a high attendance rate for the classes I am teaching.