Building a Blended Learning Plan That Functions

Concurrent Session 3

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

 During this lab, teams of participants will work together to create their own blended learning experience through our STITCH platform.  

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Joseph Wilson, Spongelab Interactive

Joseph is the Director of Business Development at Spongelab Interactive, an education technology company. He previously worked at the MaRS Discovery District as a Senior Strategist in the Education Practice, a cluster of over 200 education startups. He helped develop the Entrepreneur’s Toolkit Workshop Series and the Future Leaders program for youth at MaRS, and consults on a wide range of educational programming. He has written on topics of science, innovation and education for NOW Magazine, the Globe and Mail, Financial Post and Yonge Street. He has edited two books and written academic papers in astronomy, education, entrepreneurship and innovation strategies. He taught high school level physics, math and credit recovery for 5 years, and was nominated for the Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2009. He won the T. Eta Award of Excellence in 2002 for his work teaching with University of Toronto’s Science Outreach and has worked in exhibit and curriculum design for the Ontario Science Centre, The Royal Ontario Museum and the American Museum of Natural History.

Extended Abstract

Using Spongelab Interactive’s STITCH platform, attendees will be challenged to create their own class and lesson, assign the class, and follow up on the data provided.   Demonstrating how blended learning has evolved over the years around data and analytics, team(s) of attendees will be created during the session to deliver a specific science related learning measurable to the other team(s).

Participating teams will be provided with access to the STITCH platform, as well as access to a large selection of science content and games to create their own lesson.  Given the limited time available teams will have to quickly decide on a measurable, communicate, and plan their lesson accordingly.

Teams will then work to design, assign content, and write brief questions for some or all chosen content.  Throughout this process, teams will have to learn how to communicate with each other, how to choose appropriate content , as well as decide between a collaborative effort to create, or to decide on a leader to delegate tasks among the group.

After the brief development time, teams will test and QA each other’s creations and provide dialogue and feedback.