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Vanessa Burton

Blended Learning
my pilot project
Background to the pilot project

Before deciding on what I was going to do for my project, I spent a lot of


time completing lots of reading based on online teaching and learning.

Some of the key points I took from readings were:


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Students’ experiences of learning in virtual classrooms, Bolstad Rachel and
Lin Magdalene (Sept 2009).
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This reading was a research summary of the Ministry of Education’s Virtual
Learning Network. While my project was not dealing with distance
education, I still found it informative as it was looking at New Zealand
students and teachers experience of online learning and both groups gave
suggestions for what should be happening in traditional face to face
classes.
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The research found that in both VC and F2F classes students received few
opportunities to use ICT to convey their own learning to others (classmates
and a wider audience). I plan to address this in my class by using wiki
spaces to give students a way to show their writing work to others in the
class.
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It was also suggested that e-learning should become part of everyday
learning and not just for those in virtual class learning. I have been lucky
to have been given 5 notebook minis to trial the use of in a main stream
class. This has enabled me to give students access to computers/ internet
on a daily basis and to think of meaningful ways for the laptops to be
utilised by the class regularly.

The reading also mentioned trialling practices used by other teachers


which have been ‘helpful in supporting students’ independence, fostering a
classroom culture of collaborative learning…’ So during our F2F meetings
this year and on the BLP site I have spent a lot of time looking at what
other teachers are doing with their class in terms of e-learning. This was
one of the reasons I decided to use wikispaces for my pilot project as I
have seen some very good examples of wiki being used with students.
Vanessa Burton

Web 2.0 in School: Status, issues, propects; Bosco James (2009)


has a United States perspective and gave a clear definition of what Web
2.0 is (‘Web 2.0 can be defined as a set of internet applications that allow
participatory involvement, collaboration, and interaction among users). I
found this definition helpful as I was able to use it as a reference point to
check my pilot project was using Web 2.0 tools.
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The reading also mentioned that ‘as the digital era progresses, learning
may be once more individual.’ I have tried to incorporate this into my pilot
project by splitting my class into 3 ability groups for the writing aspect of
the unit. This allows me to give each group an individualised standard for
them to attain.
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The reading also touched on the ability of Web 2.0 being able to keep
students interested and engaged in school. I will be surveying my students
at the conclusion of the project to evaluate the effectiveness of my unit in
doing this, paying close attention to the responses of my at risk students. I
will also be asking for ideas on how to improve the interest aspect of the
unit.

I also found the reading, Supporting primary students’ online learning in a


virtual enrichment program; Frid Sandra (Nov, 2001) to be of interest
especially as it looked at the primary aspect of teaching and learning. The
reading talked about the role of teaching and students changing in a
technology classroom, with teachers acting more as facilitators to students
‘active enquiry and construction of their own understanding’, which
throughout my pilot project I have seen develop.
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While the reading also talked about the ability of education to be provided
to learners anywhere, at anytime, I have struggled to get this to happen
as students that had internet access at home seemed to be reluctant to
work on this at home and I will be asking my students what would make
them want to use class online learning sites at home.

Chapter 1, Foundations of educational theory for online learning in Role and


Function of Theory in online education development and delivery; Mohamed
Ally. This chapter looked at a range of differing views on online learning
and provided information on different theories for creating online learning
material. I really enjoyed reading this article as it explained differing
theories and their contribution to the design of online learning materials.
The article looked at 3 theories (Behaviourist, Cognitive and Constructivist)
and demonstrated in the conclusion how all three work together to produce
an optimum learning environment (Behaviourist facts, Cognitive principles &
processes, Constructivist real-life and personal applications). Eventually I
would like to combine all three theories, however for the purpose of my
pilot project I am going to concentrate on refining constructivist strategies.
Vanessa Burton

I found the implications for online learning using the constructivist


approach to be of interest and have kept them in mind while planning and
carrying out my pilot project. In brief the implications were: Learning as an
active process, using high-level processing and having learners apply
information in practical situations, learners constructing their own
knowledge, use of collaborative and co-operative learning, control of
learning process handed over to the learners, time and opportunity for
learners to reflect, meaningful learning experiences and interactive
learning to facilitate higher-level learning and social presence.
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My class

I have chosen to use my homeroom class for the purpose of my blended


learning project as I see them on a regular basis and teach them for a
number of core subjects. Out of a total of 13 students – 3 are Year 8, 7
are boys and 5 are working at stanine level 2 while the rest range from
stanine 4 to 8 (based on start of year testing).

Curriculum Focus

I have decided to use English as the curriculum focus for my project. This
term our writing focus in on transactional writing, with particular focus on
written arguments. The current curriculum level my Year 7s should be
working at is Level 3; write instructions, explanations, and factual
accounts, and express personal viewpoints, in a range of authentic
contexts, sequencing ideas logically. They should be working towards
Level 4 (which is also the level my Year 8 students should be working on)
write instructions, explanations, and factual accounts, and express and
explain a point of view, in a range of authentic contexts, organising and
linking ideas logically and making language choices appropriate to the
audience.

The specific curriculum focus of Level 3 is to express personal viewpoints,


in a range of authentic contexts, sequencing ideas logically (Level 4
organising and linking ideas logically and making language choices
appropriate to the audience.).

Part way through my pilot I decided to add in a second aspect which was
to incorporate Social Studies into the plan. This term we are looking at
Level 4 of the Social Studies curriculum, understand how people pass on
and sustain culture and heritage for different reasons.
Vanessa Burton

The pilot in action


Part 1
The Original Plan

At first my plan was for students to use Wikispaces to develop their


recount writing. I had planned for students to go to the computer room
once a week to write about something they had done over the week. We
had a few issues with this aspect due to most of the computers being quite
outdated which led to trouble with the loading of and running of
Wikispaces. It looked like at this stage my pilot project was going to be a
nightmare. Although on the bright side it was a good trial run and allowed
students to become familiar with the use of Wikispaces and to practise
logging on and off the site (for some this meant remembering their user
name and password).

I was very fortunate that my principal found the funding to allow me to


purchase 5 mini HP laptops for use in my class and once I grabbed the
wireless router from the senior corridor, we were away laughing with an
adapted plan.

Part 2
The Adapted Plan

I changed the wiki focus from recount writing to written arguments, to


keep in with my 2 Year planning and to increase the relevance of the work
for students.
To make use of having 5 laptops in my room and to enable more of an
individualised teaching and learning approach, Workstation Tuesday was
introduced.
I split my class into 3 ability groups and
designed 3 different workstations for the
groups to work on over 3 periods. One
station is a Spelling Station, where
students work on syllabifying their
weekly words (ties into the class phonetic
spelling programme), finding word
definitions and using words in sentences
(vocab building which is used for the
whole class). The second station is a teacher directed station, that allows
me to teach to specific student needs. The main station, in regards to this
piece of writing, is the Wiki station. Each week I put general instructions
for the period on the home page for the students to read and complete.
Vanessa Burton

Part 3
Throughout the Adapted Plan

The first step was identifying what my students needed to learn about
when completing a written argument. I did this by giving students an
argument topic for students to write about (on paper).

I found that most students struggled with identifying a viewpoint and


giving reasons for their view. So we then had a class discussion on what
made a better pet – cats or dogs. After posting one comment each,
students then had to work on creating their own page, introducing
themselves. I created an example using myself for students to refer to,
which helped show students what was possible to do. While completing this
activity I found only one student needed to be shown something and they
would then teach their peers the particular skill.

After the completion of this I then gave the 3 groups different


instructions for their
written arguments. The
lower group were given
easier topics, which had
room for personal opinions
and to create reasons for
their opinions without
having to complete
research. The middle group
were also given topics that
could be completed through
pure personal thought and
reason but with the option
of internet research. The
higher level group had the
same topics as the middle
group but were told they
must gather information to back up their viewpoints. Students were also
given 2 periods to complete this particular task as I found the groups
were running out of time to complete their argument.
Vanessa Burton

Part 4
Extensions to the Adapted Plan

As a way to increase the use of the laptops so they became more of an


everyday part of learning I used it in my Social Studies unit on UNESCO
World Heritage Sites. I put the class into groups of 2/3 students. Each
group had to use the internet to find information on different sites and
then present it using a combination of word and Wiki. The pairings were
mixed ability with group work being one component of the students overall
grade.

For an Achieved/ Merit grade


students needed to post onto
Wikispaces (a separate wiki
from their argument writing)
what UNESCO stands for and
what it does, Excellence was
the same, however the groups
also needed to present at least
one of their sites on the wiki
site. One reason for this was I
have found over the year a
majority of my class prefer
the cut and paste research
method and can not see the
importance of having to put information into their own words. By making
students publish their work onto internet it makes copyright relevant,
forcing students to transfer information into their own words and
therefore showing their understanding of the topic.

A second extension to my pilot project was the introduction of Japanese


through the Virtual Learning Network. As part of the ICARUS cluster we
were invited to enrol students in learning Japanese using the virtual
learning network. 7 of my students receive an 1 hour lesson using audio
conferencing and adobe connect on a Friday morning. The students then
take turns in pairs teaching the rest of the class Japanese while the rest
of the group complete the online learning activities. The 2 that were
teaching class then have the option of completing the online aspect at
home or at school.

The third extension to my pilot project has been the introduction of the
Spell Rite programme. This is to aid the students in my class who are
behind in spelling. They are currently filling in their gaps on the essential
spelling list and as part of this work on the Spell Rite computer programme
to reinforce the learning of their words.
Vanessa Burton

Conclusions
Things that I would change

- Writing detailed instructions on the Wiki site rather than giving detailed
instructions verbally to the class, this would allow for students to refer
back to the homepage when/ if they forget what is needed to do.

- Changing to Moodle instead of Wiki. At the start I was concerned


students would struggle with the learning format of Moodle and as we
were originally using the school computer lab which has a few issues
with Moodles, Wiki did seem to be the better choice. At the end of the
project, most
students seemed to
be more
comfortable with
the online learning
and we sometimes
had issues with the
download speed
around school,
which did not seem
to happen with my
students using
Moodle for an
online Japanese
course. Wiki spaces
also caused
headaches with
students not being able to create new pages at school due to syntax
errors.

- Using a Social Studies focus rather than an English focus. When I got
students to complete World Heritage Research and create a Wiki page, I
realised the scope for using multi media in online learning e.g. Video and
giving students the room to design how they wanted their learning to look.
Whereas for English it did seem limited in how appealing it could be made
to students and to give them the freedom to explore.
Vanessa Burton

What the students had to say...


The following is a few samples of what my students answered in their
survey.

1) Did you enjoy using the laptops in class?


- Yes, it is a lot easier accessing them in class rather than going to the
computer room also you can work in pairs sometimes instead of
individually.
- Yes, they were fun to use and found easy to use
- Yes, we didn’t need to go to the computer room
- Yes, it was something different to do in the classroom. I learnt a lot
about computers and how to use them.
- Yes, I think it helped my learning

All students indicated that they enjoyed the use of laptops in the
classroom.

2) Did you enjoy using wiki spaces for argument writing?


- Yes, I prefer typing rather than hand writing
- Yes, because it was fun because it wikispaces was easy to use
- Yes, because it is faster

All but one of the students said they enjoyed using wiki spaces for
argument writing. One student said it was okay, but gave no reason for this
answer.

3) Did you find using wiki spaces made learning more interesting
- okay, because if you do it as a class there is sometimes more information
- Yes, it is exciting and more faster than writing it up on the board
- Yes, it was easy to see what you had to do
- Yes, it was a surprise to see what we were doing in the period/s
- Yes, the instructions are in front of you

All but one of the students said they found wiki spaces made learning
more interesting with most stating it was easier, fun and different.

4) What was hard about learning online?


- You have to find the keys on the computer
- It was hard to find information on google and transferring it to our
poster
- Sometimes the computers were flat and sometimes the passwords did not
work
- Getting information
- Well, sometimes you click on the wrong thing
Vanessa Burton

5) What was easy about learning online?


- you got extended information
- You could google stuff that you didn’t know
- Reading the information is easier
- It is faster and you can find the work
- You just had to sign in and get on with it, sometimes if you were in
google, you would get more information than without a laptop
- Wiki spaces was easy to use

6) what ways do you think computers could be used in the classroom


- mathletics
- Classroom quizes

Most students were stumped on this question and couldn’t really think of
any suggestions of how to use the computers in the classroom.

7) What ICT skills did you learn?

-Wiki spaces (editing your profile, looking at other peoples one, how to
make a page_
-Word (change page size, orientation, fade pictures, putting pictures
behind/ infront of words, move pictures)
- Type faster
- How to turn off the computer

Every student in the class were able to give one skill that they learnt,
with most coming from Wiki Space and the Use of Microsoft Word.

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