Blended Bulletin, Issue 6

Blended Brags

In Susan Johnston's English class at JMA, students are working through personalized learning paths in grammar. Students are using NoRedInk in an independent computer station as they look to increase their skills in grammar, editing, and revising. In the span of five minutes in Susan's class, I heard one student proclaim, "I HATE THIS!" "Why does this have to be so hard?" and "Wooo! Finished! What's the next one?" Students are learning through struggling, and it is great to see!

Because October is Connected Educator's Month, I would also like to highlight the long-distance connection that Justin Taylor has created between his students and students in a classroom in Memphis, TN. Justin and Zach Seagle, a social studies teacher at The Soulsville Charter School, have co-planned an American Politics course and are holding discussions between the two classes. Justin and Zach are using Vialogues, reviewed below, as a means of sharing videos of class discussions and allowing the students to comment about the other class' discussion. Here is a link to one of the videos that you can view upon creating a Vialogues account, and a screenshot.

Cool Tools

As described above, Vialogues is a great tool for video instruction. Read my full review here!

We all know that parent communication is very important, but it can also be a challenge. Remind is a free communication tool that allows you to send bulk or single messages to parents from your computer or mobile device. The ingenious idea is the Remind does not communicate through your phone number, but rather one generated just for the use of the app, thus maintaining your privacy. Remind has also recently added Spanish translation.

TalkingPoints is also a free parent communication app that functions in a similar way to Remind. The key difference is that TalkingPoints has some added features like a library of messages and polls to send home. Most importantly, TalkingPoints translates over 200 languages, both in the messages you send and the messages sent back to you.

Professional Learning

In the webinar Adaptive Technology: Driving Dynamic Blended-Learning Environments, Michael B. Horn discusses much of what he wrote in our summer reading, Blended.

With Arne Duncan resigning as Secretary of Education, EdSurge created an informative interactive timeline of his term: Timeline: Notable Moments Along Arne Duncan's Education Journey.

Nicholas C. Donahue, president and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, authored We can do better than one-size-fits-all education to make the case for student-centered learning and personalized learning.

CNN provides an interesting look into how social media has affected being a teenager in #Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens.

In What to Do When Your Flipped Classroom Flops, Carolyn Fruin shares the lessons she learned when her flipped classroom initiative failed for her, her students, and her students' parents. This is a great example of failing forward!