Hire technology to help you solve one of your pressing instructional problems, not for technology's sake. Getting schools to identify and focus on a single instructional program is tricky. Schools have many (sometimes competing) priorities.
Technology is not always the right answer. If there's a better way to solve the problem without technology, then it's probably the wrong problem to hire technology to help you solve. Don't go blended for blended learning's sake, because when times get tough (bandwidth goes down, devices break, software doesn't integrate, or one of the other million things that can go wrong does go wrong), teachers will blame technology, and you'll be stuck. However, when the technology lets you down, ask yourself whether there's a better way to solve your instructional problem. If there isn't, you'll be able to forge ahead through your technology problems with greater resolve.
These are some examples of instructional problems to solve using technology:
- How can we better support teachers to provide more and better small-group differentiated instruction?
- How can we remediate and accelerate the learning of the students on both ends of the curve, whom we're not serving as well as the majority of students?
- How can we improve the ways we're leveraging homework time?
- How can we create more instructional time for a particular topic?
- How can we increase the amount of writing students are doing in all content areas?
- How can we capture over time student work to gauge progress and improve our instructional program?
- How can we identify and help struggling students more quickly and efficiently using data?
- How can we reduce the number of our graduates who need to take remedial math upon entering college?
The problem you're identifying should be measurable and ultimately solvable over time, after which you'll find a new problem to solve. It also should be an instructional problem, as technology does not improve student learning as a highly effective teacher does. Keep your focus on improving instruction and ultimately student learning using data.
Sample Problem Technology Might Be Hired to Solve: Lack of consistent school-wide small-group instruction (Aspire Public Schools).
A few months back, I worked with a teacher team who agreed that differentiated, small-group instruction was their most effective means for increasing student achievement, yet some teachers in the school pulled only one or two small guided-reading groups per day, while others couldn't figure out how to manage their classes tightly enough to make any small-group instruction effective.
Solution: Lab rotation to support teachers with small groups.
We arrived at a plan to pull out half the class during reading instruction to utilize computers in a lab for remediation/acceleration in math and English language arts (ELA), while classroom teachers could focus on practicing pulling three small guided-reading groups and managing the remaining students in independent reading. In this way, teachers felt they would be more supported for getting their management and small-group instructional routines in place.
Key Advice: Stay focused on the problem!
During the planning session, the teachers were engaged and excited about the new plan. Then, one teacher suggested that she also wanted to teach just ELA and social studies, reasoning that if teachers were allowed to specialize, they could do a better job with planning. My response to her was that the school was small, which meant that if teachers specialized in content, they'd probably be teaching that content to three or even four grade levels of students. The teachers were undeterred, as they were already thinking about how much easier their lives would be if they only had to plan for two content areas. So, we revisited the problem: If teachers specialized in teaching content, would this solve their primary instructional problem? That is, would specializing in content allow them to improve the lack of consistent small-group instruction? The answer was no—teachers would have less time with their students in a content-cored classroom (as student schedules would be blocked, instead of being self-contained) and would face the same small-group instructional challenges and barriers they currently faced. Although this exploration was important to the team, having the teacher team that was charged with rolling out blended learning articulate the identified problem helped us stay focused on finding ways to solve it.
Sample Problem Technology Might Be Hired to Solve: Not enough students were reaping the benefits of small-group instruction (Aspire Public Schools).
In one of our schools, we asked teachers how many small differentiated groups they were pulling each day, and then asked the teachers whether they felt student achievement would improve if they pulled more small groups. The teachers all agreed that achievement would improve, but they couldn't figure out how to pull more small groups given all the other demands on their time with their students.
Solution: In-class rotation to support differentiated groups.
We used the data (the number of small groups pulled) to set goals for using blended learning to increase the number of groups pulled each day. Then, midyear, we counted how many small groups teachers were pulling, and the number was double what it was before we started. We still needed to analyze the student achievement data to see whether students were making gains at a greater rate than before, but we were encouraged that we could finally see what increasing group instruction could look like in our classrooms.
Key Advice: Determine ideal schedules that will allow teachers to achieve the goals set.
Originally, we had teachers determine how to structure their time in order to pull additional small groups during blended learning. While some teachers appreciated the autonomy of building their ideal schedules, many struggled with the logistical challenges of having a different instructional schedule. Sometimes, the focus shifted from “How can we pull more groups?” to “How can I squeeze in time for students to be on computers?” If you can't create samples of what you hope to achieve, how can you expect teachers to make your vision of blended learning happen? See appendixes L and M for sample schedules.
Sample Problem Technology Might Be Hired to Solve: Teachers holding students to varying levels of rigor in terms of content acquisition (Summit Public Schools).
Summit Public Schools, a charter management organization (CMO) in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to redesign its model to ensure that all graduates had the content knowledge they needed to avoid remedial college courses.
Solution: Summit...
