Ready to Blend Heather Clayton Staker

Patience Nyanway is an aspiring college students in Texas. A few weeks ago Patience used her phone to interview children and parents in her neighborhood. She wanted to give them a voice so that they could share their feelings about this past school year, an unusual one for its widescale cancellation of in-person schooling.
This podcast includes the audio from her short film. You'll hear Patience interviewing several families. To see the video version, go to https://www.readytoblend.com/post/short-film-reflections or subscribe to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/readytoblend01.
Mentioned in this Show:
* Short Film: Reflections, by Patience Nyanway
* Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials
Positive reviews of this podcast make Heather ever so happy and motivated. Thank you for taking the time!

As the pandemic has required schools to innovate, including with online, blended, and hybrid models that are unfamiliar to them, too many educators have suffered from trying to reinvent the wheel. The alternative is to look at pioneering virtual and blended schools that have won hard-fought battles to design learning experiences that are happy and effective. Their successes and failures can lead the way for educators who are new to the online world.
In this class, you’ll look backward at how online and blended learning emerged over the past 20 years. With that context, you’ll look forward to imagine the online and blended solutions for the future. You’ll consider your personal openness to trying new strategies. You’ll analyze your learning design to check for the quality of engagement. And you’ll prioritize how to optimize the teacher’s use of time.
LEARNING TARGETS Understand online and blended learning and which of their characteristics as disruptive innovations are worth considering as you design the instructional strategy for your school or classroom. Cultivate a personal openness to trying new strategies with online/blended learning. Envision the core building blocks of a flexible learning arc to scaffold the student experience. Analyze options for creating independent online work. Free up your time to prioritize individual feedback and coaching with each of your students. HAVE ON HAND Graphic Organizer: Online and Blended Learning Fundamentals
FEATURED IN THIS CLASS Clayton Christensen explains Disruptive Innovation (Website) Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Book) Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools (Book) Thomas Arnett, “Distance Learning: Let’s Not Reinvent the Wheel” (blog) How to Create Learning Arcs (Ready to Blend Podcast #25: Hacks for Esteem Gaps) Professor Eric Mazur (Video from SSAT Conference) Relationships of Trust: What Great Coaches Do (Video) ENGAGE FURTHER Complete the six Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials to prove your competency in implementing the concepts discussed in this class. The micro-credentials are brought to you by BloomBoard and Ready to Blend.

In this class, Heather teaches three ways to build bridges that help learners connect across any divide they might be experiencing so that they feel safe enough to speak up and express themselves, whether at school or home.
You’ll learn to use digital tools to give learners a bridge into conversations where they might initially feel foreign or shy. You’ll discover how transparent norms can serve as a bridge to encourage sharing and participation. And you’ll explore how to tie your group discussions to individual student interests so that learners have an entry point into the group.
No one should go through the day unnoticed. Children and teenagers have ideas that can change the world. Learn how to bring everyone into the conversation.
YOUTUBE VERSION:
https://youtu.be/xbX6H7cbNgw
FEATURED IN THIS CLASS: Google Slides (software)
Book Creator (software)
Flipgrid (software)
Animoto (software)
How 2020 Shifted Perceptions of Technology in the Classroom (post; MRD Education)
Morning Group Discussion (video; Ready to Blend)
Ms. Kaylie’s slides for her Morning Group Discussion (slides; Ready to Blend)
APPLY YOUR LEARNING: Make a copy of the Survey of Safety in Sharing. Use it to diagnose how well you’re playing games, creating norms, giving opportunities for people to express themselves digitally, and tying discussions to participants’ interests.
ENGAGE FURTHER: RSVP for the Rebooting School Seminar
Earn a Bloomboard Micro-endorsement by completing Ready to Blend's Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials

I've restructured this podcast as a class, so that each episode going forward will teach a skill to help you blend online learning into school and home in ways that nurture all children.
Today's class is on using games to improve children's well-being. You'll hear evidence for why students need social and emotional intensive care right now. Then you'll listen to examples of teachers who are using games to connect together their community. You'll also hear an example of using games to reduce anxiety at home.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
on YouTube
or on the Ready to Blend website
FEATURED IN THIS CLASS:
The Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Context of COVID-19 (Publication: Rapid Systemic Review)
How to create higher performing, happier classrooms in seven moves: A playbook for teachers (Publication: Christensen Institute)
Leadership Lesson – With People Slow is Fast and Fast is Slow (Video: FranklinCovey)
Morning Meetings: Building Community in the Classroom (Video: Edutopia/Highlander Charter School)
Acton Academy Albuquerque Lip Dub 2020 (Video: Acton Academy Albuquerque)
Our New Student Experience, Fun with Friends (Video: Ready to Blend)
 
APPLY YOUR LEARNING:
Make a copy of the Team-building Activities Plan. Use it to select and schedule games for your own class or home.
 
ENGAGE FURTHER:
RSVP for the Rebooting School Seminar
Earn a Bloomboard Micro-endorsement by completing Ready to Blend's Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials

We are alive right at the moment when there's an opening of opportunity to retool the classroom for the end user. We have the will plus the disruptive innovations to do it.
School leaders and entrepreneurs can make it happen.
Today's show features the main excerpt from an interview Heather Clayton Staker did with Simon Hennessy for the Atomi podcast in which they discuss principles of disruptive innovation that will bring about the transformation.
What You Will Discover
- How nonconsumption opens a one-of-a-kind opportunity for our generation
- Why disruptive innovation can happen without any policy changes 
- The value of mindsets, learner-driven content, and learner-centered coaches
- Why and how to get started with disrupting standard schooling processes
Featured on This Show
- Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-endorsement, a set of six essential micro-credentials for teachers
- Atomi, an online teaching and learning platform based in Sydney, Australia with courses in over 190 subjects

What's the best way for school leaders to equip teachers with the skills they urgently need to transform their instructional model?
For years many educators have longed for a more personalized, competency-based, student-driven learning model to replace the traditional classroom. This year, remote/hybrid learning has created unprecedented demand for finally taking that call seriously.
In the ideal, educators would have a modular solution for PD--one that lets them order up the specific skills they need, in a simple way, at an affordable price. In this show, Heather Clayton Staker shares her latest research from the Christensen Institute that proposes a way forward for making that vision for PD possible.
What You Will Discover
- Why modularity is the aim for the next generation of PD
- The 3 requirements for true modularity
- How micro-credentials could provide modularity
- 66 competencies for student-centered teaching
Featured on This Show
- Developing a student-centered workforce through micro-credentials (Christensen Institute)
- Stitchfix
- BloomBoard
- Digital Promise
- Ready to Blend's Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials
Subscribe
This podcast is available on iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, and Stitcher. Its success depends on positive reviews, particularly on iTunes. Please leave a review, if you would!