I’ve been trying to verbalize with much difficulty; the various cultural changes that I feel are taking place at the moment. Change is in the air! Along with thousands of Bumble Bees mating on the UPenn campus…
I haven’t lived through any major cultural revolutions as of yet but I do believe I’m caught up in the midst of one. So I’d like to turn to people with more experience, people from older generations who know the signs of change – and more importantly people who have the vocabulary to describe those changes. Again as I find that all things are connected, on my quest to understand blended learning, I found some interesting cultural observations as well.
I picked up several books from the library today, and one is entitled, “The Handbook of Blended Learning”. After much contemplation and internal debating, I feel confident enough to say that the Learning Lab’s mission statement would land us under the category of Blended Learning. Because our mission is to aid classroom instruction instead of replace it, and because most of our simulations rely on an in-class debrief to really underscore the pedagogical point, we arrive on scene as blended learning facilitators.
Here is a description of a blend from the company formerly known as Macromedia’s Ellen Wagner (as quoted in the Handbook):
“Evolving blended learning models provide the essential methodological scaffolding needed to effectively combine face-to-face instruction, online instruction, and arrays of content objects and assets of all form factors. For example, in such a blended learning scenario, a student may find him or herself participating in a face-to-face class discussion; he or she may then log in and complete an online mastery exercise or two, then copy some practice exercises to a PDA to take advantage of what David Metcalf calls “stolen moments for learning” – those times between classes or meetings, while on the train, or waiting for an appointment. Think about sending a text message with results of your practice session to someone in your virtual study group using your mobile phone – and getting a voice mail with feedback on your results when you arrive at the end of your flight.”
I’m excited to read this book and I think it will serve as a platform for many future blogs. Now on to the cultural tidbits! In reading the forward, I found some sentences that seemed to confirm what I feel about culture in its current state. These following quotes are taken from Michael G. Moore’s forward in the handbook:
“If one accepts the rationale for these developments and the underlying movement toward blended learning, one is, in fact, aligning with what I believe is an inexorable trend toward fundamental change not only in ancient concepts about teaching, learning, and the place of the academy in society, but in how society allocates the resources it invests in education – particularly, the relative apportionment of resources between people and hardware.”
“Beyond such changes in thinking about teaching, what is represented by this handbook is the expansion of a slowly growing political movement that anticipates strategic changes in how national and institutional resources are allocated for the educational enterprise and how they are managed. “
Finally, another reference to cultural change using the education system as a focal point comes from two Wharton Professors who are releasing a book in June entitled, “Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track.”
Check out the product description here. The first paragraph really strikes true in a lot of what I’m reading these days.
“In the age of the Internet, we educate people much as we did during the Industrial Revolution. We educate them for a world that no longer exists, instilling values antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. Worst of all, too many schools extinguish the very creativity and joy they ought to nourish.”
I realize that the whole “Blended Learning” revolution is not a new concept. In fact, I read in the forward that teachers have been using blended learning methods since as early as the 1920s – BUT – I think the technological resources add many more ingredients to choose from when creating a blend. Spreading awareness of what works, spreading credible knowledge of the modern day learner, and realizing that having a one-dimensional or narrow focus on what encompasses education are of great importance in an age where everyone is given a soap box to throw out their opinions.
I say all of this sincerely to you, standing atop my own modern-day soap box 
