blended learning

"With the opportunity of online learning coming on,…what we talk about is shifting from this factory model system to a student-centered one that personalizes for each and every child," says Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and co-author of the new book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. Horn recently sat down with Reason magazine Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward during the National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C., for a discussion of how blended learning joins traditional classroom models with software-based and online learning.

Global demand for online learning is growing. In 2000, 45,000 K-12 students reportedly took online courses. Less than a decade later, the number had grown to more than three million. Projecting from the increase in online course usage in 2000 to 2009 in the K-12 sector, by 2019 50 percent of K-12 students could be taking online courses.

When Ketcham Elementary School was selected to roll out a schoolwide computer-based learning initiative, Principal Maisha Riddlesprigger was skeptical about “putting kids in front of computers.”

Since the 1970s we've known of Moore's Law, which states the processing power of computers will double every two years. Forty years later, computers are presumably a million times more powerful.

In front of hundreds of education officials Monday, state Board of Education President Gayle Manchin admitted current teaching methods are not engaging students like they should.

Scott Ellis took his Greeley audience back in time to when he was in first grade at Tavelli Elementary School in Fort Collins.