I had the opportunity to share some insights on Blended Learning 2 years ago held in Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok, Thailand. It was not because I am an expert with Blended Learning but because I was practicing this disruptive innovation in education for the last 3 years.

What is Blended Learning?

Well, Blended Learning (BL) is a pedagogy where students can benefit from out-of-the-classroom setting as much as they can benefit from inside the classroom, perhaps even more.

BL takes many forms and one of the forms is what we call "FLIPPED CLASSROOM".

In a flipped classroom setting, students are given topics to "learn in advance" essentially outside of the classroom. How do students do this? The teacher, with the use of online resources like YouTube videos, shares the links using educational online tools called LMS or Learning Management System. In my case, I use Schoology which resembles a Facebook-like interface that is familiar to both teachers and students.

PHOTO Screenshot: Schoology.com

During my presentation, one guest asked me why "disruptive innovation" and what does it mean? My reply was quoted from the following source:

 A disruptive technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry.  
- Computing Fundamentals Glossary

I followed it up with an example and asked the audience if they ever have heard about Bitcoin. This was October 2014 and I learned about Bitcoin a year before that but did not really paid attention. I regretted that.

So, back to Bitcoin. I did not see any show of hands. These were teachers from Thai Government schools and a few international schools all over Bangkok. As far as I was concerned, it was not a surprising response.

So I explained to them what Bitcoin was and how it can change our view of currency and money. These were teachers so I moved forward and compared Bitcoin with blended learning as to its effect in the traditional teaching models.

So, What Exactly Is Happening in a "Flipped Classroom"?

This is what's happening. A picture really paints a thousand words.

These were my students 2 years ago. Each one of them has a different activity as you can see on their monitors. One watches a video, the other seems to play a video game, and the other one browses through YouTube.

Where's the teacher?

Obviously I'm at the back of the camera! LOL

But that's what exactly where the teachers should be: in the background. 

I am the "Guide on the side" instead of the "sage on the stage".

I didn't give any lectures anymore in front of my classes. I use the LMS to post "assignments" which they can do anywhere, anytime it's convenient to them. 

By the time they come to class, they have an idea of what's going to happen in the classroom. Most of them go right ahead with the class work with little or no supervision at all!

My class is a NO HOMEWORK class!

Everything must be done in the classroom so that I can monitor, assist, and guide them as they do their work. They follow video instructions, most of them coming from YouTube. If there are some instructions that confuse them, they call on me and I clarify things for them.

I get to teach a 24-student class on a more personal level.

I post "advance work" in the LMS platform for those who are fast-learners while assisting and guiding the slower ones to finish the task at hand.

Fast-learners assist their classmates, too!

I will discuss "flipped classroom" and BL in more details on my next post if teachers here in Steemit find this post helpful to them.

For now, let's me continue SHOWING OFF here (LOL)

What to Expect on this Seminar-Workshop

Here, I was introducing what to expect from BL.

What BL is NOT

It was a "full-packed" seminar-workshop from Bangkok Government schools and international schools. I was talking about what BL is NOT.

The Myths of Blended Learning

I discussed in details the Myths about BL.

After the "talk" came the Workshop.

As the attendees came to the seminar-workshop, I asked the organizers to have the attendees pick one candy that I requested them to provide. There were 5 different candies that attendees chose from.

Despite of my instructions to keep the candies until they were actually needed, some of the teachers ate them. Teachers are the "hardest" students to teach! LOL

By the time the "workshop" started, I asked the whole group to separate according to the kind of candies they have chosen. Those who ate the candies could form their own group.

I have given them a link of a YouTube origami video, where it showed how to make a "swan", inspired by one of my favorite TV Series "Prison Break". The attendees were given papers, scissors, and other tools they need to "re-create" what they see in the video. One important thing, since the goal of this workshop was to allow them to "learn" from the video resource with little help or no help at all from the teacher, I allowed them to choose similar videos that they are more comfortable with and easier for them to follow.

This is one of the beauties of BL!

Students learn at their own phase, on their own terms, and with the resources they are able to learn from. One of the goals of BL is for students to think on their own, find resources on their own.

Students learn when they're having fun.

And you can expect student output are more superior from the results of traditional teaching instructions.

A post of @derekareith about a possible role of Steemit in education could be one of the "disruptive innovation" of this community. Please check also his other posts on the matter of education.

If you want to know more about blended learning, follow @cjclaro, upvote, and re-steem this article.