LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BLENDING: This week, The Learning Accelerator (TLA) released a promo video on the potential for blended learning, following the footsteps of similar efforts like “Shift Happens,” which debuted in 2008, and Education Element’s 2013 “The Fundamentals of Blended Learning.” Where "Shift Happens" was a massively-Tweeted reality check on the need for schools to catch up with the digital age, Ed Elements' video suggests ways to actually implement the tools to make it happen.
The Learning Accelerator’s video functions as a call to arms to bring blended learning to 50 million public school students. It includes interviews with Michael B. Horn of the Clayton Christensen Institute, as well as teachers, students, and parents from Madison Park Business and Art Academy, which is currently in year two of its 1:1 laptop program. Teachers and parents alike cite the importance of blended learning on the basis that it “personalizes learning” and allows teachers “to look at data in the moment”, which “informs instruction in the next period.”
This release follows TLA’s September release of its Blended Learning Implementation Guide. The Learning Accelerator is a non-profit founded in 2013 to accelerate the implementation of high-quality blended learning in American schools--and plans to "mobilize more than $100 million" over the next five years to do so.
