leitura... da educação... [dos receios (medos...?) sobre]... o blended learning... de um artigo [que vale a pena ler...!].. via washington post...!

"I am inclined to be a fan of blended learning because I have watched kids at work, and the contrast between what happens in too many classrooms and what blended learning makes possible is striking. 

For blended learning, to soar, teachers cannot be controlling the action, and they don’t have to. They aren’t walking away, of course, but they are mentoring and monitoring and coaching, and sometimes instructing. This article speaks to that point.

 

However, my enthusiasm is tempered by three fears; you can call them ‘concerns’ if you like. They involve faddishness, greed, and limited vision.

Faddishness: I worry that blended learning will be increasingly vague and undefined as it grows in popularity. Right now almost everyone in education seems to be waving the blended flag, saying “We’re doing blended learning,” even if they don’t have a clue. At the Philanthropy Roundtable meeting a number of very savvy people, including Dave Levin of KIPP, emphasized that blended learning begins with, and relies upon, skilled teachers. So be skeptical when you hear educators endorse blended learning; ask a lot of questions.

Greed: The faddishness is an open invitation to hucksters, who can sense when educators are desperate to prove they are au courant. Technology is big business, and I can just hear the marketing guys pitching their products as ‘perfect’ for blended learning, blah blah blah. See Dave Levin’s comment above — it begins with teachers and teaching.

Limited Vision: My biggest fear is that blended learning is going to turn out to be just another crash and burn disappointment. This will happen unless its adherents also participate in a serious conversation about the goals of schooling. Right now it seems to me that blended learning is being used to get to the same old benchmarks, just faster and more individually. But those benchmarks — basically bubble tests — are limited and limiting.

Defenders of using blended learning to get to the accepted benchmarks say, in effect, “First things first. Let us get our low performing children to pass reading and math tests, and then we will let them loose.” But those goals — truth be told — are of dubious value. Why go there? 

The potential of blended learning is vast, perhaps unlimited. Why not use it to find other pathways to a larger set of skills that includes literacy and numeracy? I’ve seen too many classrooms where the focus on basic skills is of such intensity that achieving them has become both the floor and the ceiling."

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