Main content
Course: Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute > Unit 4
Lesson 2: Blended learning softwareThe different types of software used in blended learning
Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.
Want to join the conversation?
- Great discussion. Thank You! Can you also talk about higher education? I guess issues and scale are very different.(2 votes)
- There is now a section dedicated to that =)(3 votes)
- Hi, guys. My name is André, and I'm a math teacher from Brazil. I would like to record some classes the way Khan Academy does, so it would be nice if you could share what kind of software/hardware Sal uses in his videos. Thanks a lot!(2 votes)
- How can I learn speed reading? And is there a way to show up a whole e-book on the screen sort of like the subtitles in English from this video?(1 vote)
- I don't know about your second question, but I know that speed reading is something that just comes from practice. (Probably something that you didn't want to hear.) Once you've been reading A LOT, you will be better at (1)skimming over material, (2)comprehending content, (3)retaining/remembering the content. As for your second question, I've never read an e-book, so I'll leave somebody else to answer that.(3 votes)
- Is there a specific software of LMS for an online course that is most favored for community colleges?(1 vote)
- Can I use Accelerated Reader for college books?(1 vote)
- Anyone knows some nice audiobooks for example on youtube that I can listen to at faster speed?(0 votes)
- I find that with subtitles in english and this video at 2x or 1.5x speed I can absorb the information fast and remember it as well and I memorize it better because I can also listen to it. Is there software like this for books, so they are read at fast speed and lines of the book show up on the (computer) screen at the same time?(0 votes)
- What are you doing on this move(0 votes)
Video transcript
- When thinking about software, it's helpful to think
about the distinctions between four different types. First we have whole course software, next we think of supplemental software that supports a core course. The third would be teacher tools and the final one would be learning apps. - When we think about
whole course software, we're talking about the software that can replace an existing course. Think about a student taking Biology I or world history online. This is where the software does the majority of the learning work essentially on its own. And the teacher's job is to check in on student
progress, monitor things but the majority of the
learning is via the software. - So this is the sort of software that we're seeing in a
lot of flex-like programs around the country, from Carpe Diem, from its schools in
Arizona and Indianapolis to a lot of the dropout recovery schools and alternative schools
that are popping up in school districts across the nation. - And some of the big
companies in the space that we see schools using are folks like Apex Learning, Edgenuity, K12.com to name a couple. And the big advantage here is that it's all there in one package. The teacher's job isn't to pick resources and align everything and make sure everything's perfect, you hand a lot of the
work over to the software. And of course the downside is it may not be as perfect
as if the teachers actually curated and found everything on their own. So a little easier to use and maybe a little less personalized for each student what they need. - The second category is
supplemental software. Supplemental software is that which really supports the core course but it's not delivering the
core instruction per se. The teacher is still
designing that experience or delivering lessons in
certain aspects and so forth. So, think about our KIPP LA example where they use a lot of
supplemental software such as ST Math and the teacher is still
delivering core lectures, helping to group students
and deliver interventions, and then students are going
off to the online software to do various supplemental
activities at various points. - And ST Math along with Dreambox are two of the titles we've seen in a lot of the schools that we visited in this elementary and middle school for the topic of math. ST Math is really nice because it's almost an entirely visual-based way of teaching math. Students can start with
sort of number sense back in kindergarten and go all the way through more complicated algebra for middle school. And each topic that a student gets is just a little bit harder than the topic beforehand and kids are getting a lot of practice. So it's just this very iterative intuitive way of students to learn and it doesn't rely on them
having to read anything, very self-directed in
their own learning process. - The other program that Brian mentioned is Dreambox learning. And Dreambox uses a game-based engine for a lot of its content but it's actually adaptive and that's the real key part of it which is that it delivers
problems to students that are generally just at their level. And if they miss something
it will level down and give them something easier or if they need more challenging problems based on their performance, they'll serve up harder and
harder problems over time. The third supplemental resource that a lot of people use
and are familiar with is the Khan Academy. Now, the Khan Academy has
gotten a legendary following for its videos on an
impressive array of topics that started with math. But actually what we find most impressive about Khan Academy has nothing to do with its videos but this infinite set of practice problems that the Khan Academy provides, that allows students to continually practice and practice to actually show and demonstrate mastery and then dive back into concepts that they're still not getting something. So, the Khan Academy
is also a free resource which is why we see a lot of schools get their start into blended learning by demoing with Khan. - I joke, I call it the gateway
drug into blended learning. You know, it makes sense that math is where so many people start because math has a relatively
concrete set of steps that you're supposed to go to learn it and there's a discreet
right and wrong answer. And arguably it's gonna be a lot harder to design great software
to teach philosophy. But even in the English Language Arts we're seeing a lot of new titles come that people are finding
a lot of benefit from. There's a program that
a lot of the schools we visited use called Achieve3000 which essentially takes
current event topics and it writes the same article at different levels of reading
comprehension for the text. So the whole class can be engaging in interesting learning
and conversations together but students are reading at their just right reading level and then that can grow with them as their reading levels improve. - Another tool that our schools are using is Accelerated Reader. In Accelerated Reader, schools create libraries of leveled content at different Lexile
levels of different books. And then basically what
happens is that students read those different books
at their appropriate level. After they've read the books they take quizzes on Accelerated Reader where then they get the
data input into the system where teachers can check to make sure that students
are actually comprehending what they're reading and that they're at the right level. From there then, basically
what Accelerated Reader does is create a really cool virtual bookshelf. It sort of looks like your books on iTunes where students can keep track of all the books that they've read and Accelerated Reader also keeps track of all the words that
students are reading as well. - When I was at navigator schools, a student was showing me her
Accelerated Reader bookshelf and she was, you know, with pride showing me the books, and I said, "Wow! You've read all
those books this year?" And she looked at me and said, "No, that's this month." And then she scrolled down and showed me this incredible bookshelf of titles that she had read. And the pride that she had was sort of really neat to watch. And this is an example of where the software doesn't
have to do everything. All right, the act of just reading a book is arguably probably
the most important part of the learning process we
would imagine in schools. But the combination of
a nice piece of software to ensure comprehension and that they give the teacher data, and maybe motivate kids a little bit makes it work so much more compellingly. - We're also seeing some innovations in English Language Arts
around the book itself. So we're seeing companies popup like Gobstopper and Light Sail that are essentially trying to be the ebook for a lot of schools. And what they're doing
is taking these books and putting them into a digital format, and then providing some
intelligence around it. So the opportunity for teachers to embed videos or quizzes, just little notes to say, "Hey, did you pick up
on this little passage? "What do you think it means?" Ways to interact more and more deeply with their students. Our third category of tools really focuses on software tools that help schools run better. So we're talking about
teacher productivity tools meaning things that make
teacher's lives easier, help you run the school better or help the basic
administration in a school. - And there are just too many of these to cover in detail but we just want to give you a taste of a couple of the ways in which people are thinking
about using technology to do things that used to be done manually either better or more
quickly for teachers. - So one example is Edmodo which is a communications platform that a lot of teachers around the world actually are using to communicate with students and parents in a safe environment. Post articles and other
content on the platform so people can access them and use them in a
variety of creative ways. - It's almost like Facebook
for teachers really. Another example is a
company called Class Dojo that's really working on
a student behavior system where they can give
merits and demerit points for the kind of behavior as a student teacher wants more of or
less of of the students. And the kids get to keep
track of their own data and they do it via these
cute little monster avatars that they each get to have. - We mentioned Exit Ticket earlier but basically in this tool, teachers can ask questions of students to check for understanding, and student respond via whatever digital devices at their disposal. And then teachers get a resulting poll map that basically allows them to see how their class is understanding what they're going over. Now, there are other
tools like this as well including Socrative and Poll Everywhere. - There's also an
important piece of software which would be the
Learning Management System or what we would call the LMS. And this is really where
schools and teachers are putting the assignments, keeping track of the videos
that they've recorded, storing student's grades. - Now, this is a huge
area with lots of players so it would be too
complex to just give you a comprehensive list. But just to give you a flavor
for what these look like, we're seeing companies like Blackboard, Modo which is an open
source version of it. We have Instructure
with their canvas system and even Edmodo in many classrooms is serving the purpose of an LMS. - And having a good LMS
makes it so that schools don't just have to collect
all these resources and send them via e-mail or have a big Google Doc. It's trying to create a
holistic learning experience for the students all in one place. And lastly, there's the
category of Learning Apps. And the big difference here is really about how much time and for how long of a period of time these are being used
in a classroom setting. So an app might show up
for a couple students when needed or for this
particular little unit where something like Dreambox or ST Math, you see that being used by
the majority of the students for the length of the year. The other interesting thing about apps is we're seeing parents
use apps at home a lot to supplement what's
happening in the classroom.