Blended Learning

During the last 2 years, I’ve been learning about Blended Learning and the Flipped Classroom model.

What I can tell to all teachers and people involved in education is that Blended Learning is not a teacher substitute. Blended Learning is another tool used by a teacher o professor to learn in a different way.

Now a days, things go very fast. Tendencies change day by day, technology discoveries and implementations can change by the hour. This is what is happening today.

Today, everybody is linked to their devices and students are not the exception. When a world turns as fast as today, everything around it has to change as well. Those who stay behind are forecast to be forgotten. This happened with many companies making such as the online search engine Excite. Once, Excite was offered to buy Google, when Google just started. They passed the option and now, no one can remember who or what is Excite.

This is why education has to evolve and adapt for what is happening in today’s world. Many can agree that this is happening too slow, but if we do a fine judgement, the change finally came. Today, the classroom is changing from rows, to group of desks. To only the teacher speaking, to activities where students share their ideas with one another. From copy and paste research projects, to Problem Based Projects. All of this is part of the new education era. It took a while. It took sometime to change the obsolete pro-Industrial Revolution education to the 21st century education.

Here is where the Blended Learning applies and is just great. For our case, we are going to use blended learning as the learning that happens when technology and education meet. Where both of these blend together and are used by teachers to teach and students to learn. It is a new education era. It is a tool that saves time and keeps students engage. Those teacher that have used blended learning in their classroom are happy and they do not want to go back the standard way. They do not want to go back, because they see the results in their students. Their classes fly by and students do not want to leave.

Blended learning can be used in any classroom, in any subject, in any level; from Kindergarten to PhDs. It is an amazing tool where all the parties involved are willing to participate.

As a teacher I use blended learning continuously in my classroom. Thanks to this, I have had the opportunity to change my students’ mindset from not wanting to do anything, to be constantly engaged and asking for more work to do.

But as any other project in life, it needs patience and organization. In the section Blended Learning Tips and Tricks will be available the strategies and steps I follow to be able to succeed with my elementary kids. Anybody can take these ideas and adapt it to their classroom. I want to believe that these strategies are good for students from 4th to 8th grade.