Blended learning is defined as “A training curriculum that combines multiple types of media. Typically, blended learning refers to a combination of classroom-based training with self-paced e-learning”. This is the future of education today. Many of us have experienced some types of university or classroom based education that incorporates significant amount of time using the internet, videos, or non-teacher based input. It wasn't a part of my education as a child, but I didn't even have an e-mail address until college! We all see the pace of technological development increasing significantly over the last 20 years. Our children need to be much more tech-savvy than most of us.
Blended learning IS the future of high quality education. There are few schools you encounter that aren’t incorporating some aspect of online education as a part of their programs. Schools that don’t are falling behind because it is impossible for one person in the classroom to compete with all the knowledge that is out there at the fingertips of students.
However, there is no online substitute for ‘real’ world interactions, with all their subtle cultural cues, moments of inspiration, and social engagement. For me, I love the adage that more is ‘caught’ than ‘taught’. This truism conveys the significant reality that the personal interactions between people that ‘teach’ and transfer behaviors and knowledge are unreproduceable in online environments for the most part.
Thus, we blend the best of online knowledge and curriculum with great role models and positive social interaction in a classroom or school environment to get a system of education that produces young people who are technologically relevant, creative, problem solvers and socially conscientious, community engaged, noble people. This develops the whole person, as schools should.
Here are a couple of places that you can read up on to understand the blended learning we’ll be doing at International School of Djibouti:
http://partners.calverteducation.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning
Have you encountered online education before? What was your experience, was it positive?