THE EDTECH MEETUP (SF): A dark and stormy night did not deter the crowd from descending upon the old SF Chroncle building for The EdTech Meetup (SF)'s panel on blended learning, moderated by yours truly, Tony. Many thanks to the eclectic mix of attendees, and of course, to the wonderful panelists. A few paraphrased snippets of the conversation:
"We're not married to the flipped classroom as the primary way to use Khan Academy because that assumes that every student learns the same way, and that's not an assumption we're comfortable making."--Elizabeth Slavitt (School Implementations, Khan Academy)
"A lot of content is locked up in teachers' heads, and we know there are a lot of Sal Khans out there. We hope to give Sal a run for his money."--Wade Roberts (Co-founder, Educreations)
"What we know works is great teaching--and the most under-hyped benefit of blended learning is the ability to free up teacher time and reallocate resources."--Matt Bowman, (Program Manager, Seton Education Partners)
"There's an important difference between what motivates students and how engaged they are in the content. As more data gets collected over time, we'll be able to decide on how to use the most effective tools and the right moment."--Charlie Buffalino, (Online Learning Specialist, Rocketship Education)
And a brutally honest assessment from the youngest dude in the building, Jarred Sumner, who's about to drop out of high school to move on to more engaging endeavors: Give a student three or four days to do a project on an iPad and most will do 20 minutes of hard work and spend the rest of the time looking at cat videos.
