Free, online training series helps teachers, school, and district leaders
Cupertino, CA – August 10, 2015 – The Learning Accelerator (TLA), a non-profit organization catalyzing the transformation of American K-12 education through blended learning on a national scale, and grantee Relay Graduate School of Education (Relay), a leading, nationally accredited graduate school of education, today launched a series of online training modules to help teachers make the shift to blended learning.
“Figuring out how to use technology to reach every student is a tough task, for novice and veteran teachers alike. Educators need access to really high-quality, on-demand training that will help them learn about and translate ideas into actionable strategies for their classrooms,” said Beth Rabbitt, Partner at The Learning Accelerator. “Relay is helping us figure out how to solve this problem, having researched and developed a series of practice-based, deep blended learning modules for use by teachers, coaches, and leaders across the nation.”
Relay is a leading teacher training organization. With the support of TLA, the organization has spent the last year developing this new curriculum. “We visited over 35 schools across the country, identifying common denominators of practice, including strategies for routines and culture. We really wanted to focus on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of blended learning to make this relevant and accessible for all teachers,” said Juliana Finegan, Relay’s Blended Learning Curriculum Designer. “Each module is designed to be tangible, concrete, and inspiring, with resources in the form of videos, readings, named strategies on the granular level, and even discussion forums for sharing ideas with peers.”
The first three modules, which were launched to the general public on Relay’s course platform, include:
-
BL-101: Beginning to Blend, is designed to introduce teachers to what blended learning is, reflect on current practice, and then apply concrete strategies and resources to start blending or fine tuning their instruction.
-
BL-102: Rolling Out Blended, focuses on the “building blocks” of rolling out blended, including setting up the learning space, creating routines, and building a culture with buy-in, collaboration, and student autonomy.
-
BL-103: Teaching Each Student, is aimed at helping teachers leverage technology to address instructional challenges through the use of data and planning. It also includes ideas for how to run a successful pilot.
The first three teacher learning modules are available at: https://learn.relay.edu.
“These modules are totally open access and designed to be used in multiple contexts, by individual teachers as well as integrated into school- and district-level approaches,” said Rabbitt. “Initial feedback has been terrific, and we hope that this training will be a game-changer for certain communities that haven’t had the resources or local expertise to solve the problem alone.”
This initial launch will be complemented by the release of a fourth learning module in October, which will focus on “Extending Your Blending,” helping teachers take their practice to the next level in their classrooms as well as their broader learning communities.
For more information about TLA, contact Beth Rabbitt at beth.rabbitt@learningaccelerator.org. For additional information about Relay’s Blended Learning work, contact blended@relay.edu.
