Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change by Catlin Tucker, A Review REPUBLISHED

This post was originally posted on Juneau Education Association's JEDI blog on 11/6/16, found here: http://www.jedi.education/

Alaska Staff Development Network (ASDN) recently offered a webinar course with blended learning guru, Catlin Tucker.  If the term “blended learning” or the name Catlin Tucker are unfamiliar to you, you’re not alone; I was not familiar with either until I took this recent class.  But now that I am familiar, I have immersed myself in both.  Blended learning is essentially blending online lessons with traditional lessons in the classroom, but Catlin Tucker presented organizational tools, websites, protocols, and more to help teachers do this most effectively in a way that could immediately be woven into the classroom.  Most of the information she shared can also be found in her recently co-authored text, Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change.  I purchased the book early-on in the course and was able to follow along during the webinar through the book and gain a deeper understanding and see more examples than a 90-minute course allows for.  This text proves to be an incredible resource.

This 13-chapter resource is divided into four parts. Part one is to convince you to switch to a blended learning model; I began the course as a believer. Part two covers the practical information about hardware and curriculum; I learned a vast amount regarding different websites, systems, and online resources to include in my classroom. Part three dives in and explores different ways to embed blended learning in the classroom; as someone who has been using technology in the classroom for a while, I found this to be the most beneficial for me. And part four is a single chapter that discusses personalizing blended learning to fit our students, teaching styles, and unique situations.  

Within the text, each chapter has been systematically laid out in an order that allows an educator to progress through the book and build upon earlier ideas.  Within each chapter, Catlin and co-authors have made the text visually appealing.  Visuals are used to explain nearly every idea, important details are bulleted, and a neutral color palette is applied.  In addition to the visuals, each chapter begins with an epigraph that sets the tone and ends with suggested book study questions which I found valuable as an individual reading and processing this text.  

Even without the text, I’m certain educators have gained an incredible amount from attending Ms. Tucker’s webinars.  She is seamless in her transition of presenting information and asking participants to try new activities online to brainstorm ideas between participants.  She modeled blended learning techniques and provided resources in each webinar.  But as an educator who has focused on building a blended learning classroom for the past several years, I wanted that hard-copy resource to return to in order to refine my classroom teaching even after the webinar had ended.

After several years of doing blended learning, not realizing it had a name, I still felt I was able to gain much from her webinar and even more from her text.  I look forward to referring to the text as the school year progresses and continually implementing new techniques to increase the effectiveness of my practice in a blended learning classroom.

Resource

Tucker, Catlin R., Tiffany Wycoff, and Jason T. Green. Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide toward Sustainable Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2017. Print.
Lindsey Cassidy