Blended Learning Allowing You to be More Present in the Classroom with Office Mix

Have you heard of the Flipped Classroom or Blended Learning? Do you want to be more present in your classroom giving back valuable time to your students?

 Let's take a look at how one Creekview Middle School teacher demonstrates this using Office Mix and devices in her classroom. Lisa Craft a science teacher demonstrates how she can be more present with her students while she uses blended learning and Office Mix with her labs. Her students were studying genetics and she prepared an Office Mix for them including video explaining each section of the lab, multiple choice questions as students progressed, demonstration videos and apps that they would use during the lab. This allowed her students to move at their own pace through the lab without the need for group instruction. It permitted Lisa to move about the classroom and be involved with any questions the students had as well as any reteach opportunities. This gave great freedom to Lisa and she could do more formative assessment and discussions with her class.

Blended learning uses a mixture of online learning and traditional classroom learning creating a hybrid approach. It allows students to have some power over time, pace, and place of learning. It provides students the ability to do instructional work or lecture as homework for more class time to be devoted to more collaborative activities and questions.

Lisa used Office Mix, "Superpowers for PowerPoint", which is an add-in for Office. It gave her the ability to record video or audio, annotate on her slides, place in multiple choice questions, add in apps and put in videos from Youtube or the net. It creates a short interactive video in which the students receive a URL link and they can watch each section. Check out Office Mix for Teachers for great ideas and tutorials.

 

 

 

Lab partners work together as they open the link for the Office Mix

 



Students tasting the strip of paper to test if they have recessive or dominant traits

Students watch teacher created videos in Mix explaining the lab assignment.



The class works with apps to learn about Genetics and Punnett Square



Students are instructed to examine their thumbs for recessive or dominant traits.

 http://mix.office.com

Twitter Slow Chat Opportunity

Have you experienced a Twitter Chat yet? They are a great way to connect with other educators on Twitter to talk about a pre-determined topic through a series of questions and answers on Twitter. They typically last about an hour or so, and although they happen pretty much anytime throughout the day or night, most educators participate in a chat in the afternoons or evenings on your own time.

The Instructional Technology team at Arlington ISD is going to shake things up a bit and host a Twitter Slow Chat. There will be only one question a day for a week. Anyone that would like to participate can follow the hashtag #arlingtech and answer the question anytime throughout the week.

Topic: The 4 C's (Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Conclusion)
When:  January 26-29 (one question a day)
Where: Twitter
How: Search for #arlingtech to see the question and answers. Feel free to add your own answer, but be sure to include the hashtag. Go ahead and add #emsproud too! Follow @AISDITD for all of the information, and while you're there, be sure to follow us too ... @EMSISDIT

We (as in non-AISD educators) have been invited to join in. This will be a fun, stress-free way to participate in a Twitter Chat. If you want more information, watch this short video from Marcus Miller, the Coordinator for Instructional Technology in Arlington ISD. 

Contact your district Instructional Technology if you have questions or need help participating!