Blended Learning: An Approach for Students and Teachers

Blending Learning is the popular approach that combines face-to-face instruction with digital learning and resources. There is a great need to prepare our students for the 21st century workplace. Many believe that a blended learning approach gives educators a variety of ways to meet the diverse needs of students, allowing for differentiation of instruction, while also providing data used to drive decision-making. Blended learning will look very different across schools - and even classrooms. The Online Learning Consortium defines blended learning as a course where anywhere from 30%-70% of the instruction is delivered online.

According to Principal Megan Kinsey, “Teachers can be highly successful in a blended environment when they make time for thinking ahead and planning how their classroom will look, feel, and sound in a technology-rich environment.” Initially, a blended learning approach will require educators to dedicate time to learn new things and to be willing to change. Kinsey recommends three steps for implementing a blended learning environment:

1. Find Your Philosophy and Live It - Determine what blended learning will look like in your classroom and know that you will be learning alongside your students. Be prepared for “bumps in the road”. Don’t get discouraged, learn from them and move forward.

2. Don’t Wait Around for PD - Find It - Kinsey recommends getting on Twitter and looking for Professional Development opportunities. She also suggests finding a Professional Learning Community. If you use Pepper, you’ve already got one. Pepper is designed to benefit educators in a variety of ways: it provides flexible, unlimited access to online professional learning, supports a blended training approach, provides a collaborative environment where topics can be discussed in small, personal communities, and enables teachers to build a professional portfolio and share best practices with instructional coaches and peers.
3. Design and Implement - A good plan and well thought out lessons are the most successful.

You can read more about Blended Learning by visiting Edutopia’s Blended Learning: Resource Roundup.

Also, as you search for professional development, be sure to visit all of our Pepper course offerings on our website for great options with a blended training approach.

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New Science Courses: Investigating New Science Standards

Pepper has just released 4 new Science Courses: Investigating New Science Standards. There are 4 courses with the same title, but customized for different levels: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Each course focuses on investigating the background, structure, and conceptual shifts of the new Next Generation Science Standards. The goal of this course is to help teachers understand these shifts and have an opportunity to examine some of the background research that was used to frame the standards. 

Teachers will experience information through a variety of media formats targeted to the following objectives:  

• Describe the need and vision for new science standards.  
• Understand and use the three dimensional structure of the Performance Expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards (Science and Engineering Practices, the Disciplinary Core Ideas, and the Crosscutting Concepts).  
• Present an argument for the need of instructional supports for students as they develop a 3-dimensional understanding of science.  
• Articulate the major conceptual shifts of the Next Generation Science Standards.  
• Generate a general description of the types of resources that will help teachers in their work.

Throughout the course, opportunities are provided for teachers to connect their learning across sessions and to explicitly consider the implications of that learning for classroom practice. Teachers will also be able to revisit their work and reflections by viewing their individual Course Portfolios. 

To learn more about Next Generation Science Standards, view our recent blog post on this topic. 

Be sure to check out all our Pepper course offerings.

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