Thoughts on Blended Learning

Throughout this Blended Learning adoption process, I have been struggled with several questions: what do I need to do in class to make sure that the students are learning all of the material that I have to teach them in the most interesting and interactive way? How do I ensure that the students are fully utilizing all of the tools that I have provided for them? And finally, how do I go about finding and integrating these new tools into my classroom.

The implementing tools question has been answered through my implementation meeting with Paul (thank god), and I have decided that I will be featuring a flipped classroom model with elements of station rotation. I plan on setting up novel captains for each work studied outside of class in my AP Literature course. This will necessitate students leading discussions, and responding to each other's blog posts.

The question of ensuring the students utilization of these tools remains. I will have to maintain close watch over their blogs and responses on Blogger or Edmodo (whichever I believe to be easier). A concern I also have is whether or not they will be appropriate with their responses. My hope is that they will be able to assist each other in the understanding of difficult material even outside of the class. Because of the structure of the course, we will not discuss the text in depth until after the reading assessment, so unless they are completely off track with their blog posts, I will leave them to discuss it amongst themselves.

As for the tools used within class, I have found websites ( http://artgallery.yale.edu/  https://thewadsworth.org/  http://www.moma.org/ ) that highlight the art available even in places far away, so that students can interpret it alongside works. For example, Edwin Austin Abbey's "Hamlet" (http://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/62090) can be studied before the trap scene in the play for deeper understanding of the text.

So far, I have only found a few pieces that I am confident in including, but I also know that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that as time goes on, I will have more confidence and will learn more about the tools available online.