Becoming Blended: Session #4 L2 A Practical Course for Remote Pedagogy with Amos Raban

This teacher training will be offered on Zoom. RSVP to receive the link.Classrooms Without Borders is offering this fully subsidized teacher training to all classroom educators. This six-part series will take place on July 20, 23, 27, 30, and August 3 and 10. Each class will begin at 3:00 pm Eastern Time, and will be one and a half hours long.
Educators attending this program are eligible to receive Pennsylvania Act 48 continuing education credits.
Becoming Blended: A Practical Course for Remote Pedagogy
When you ask teachers to reflect on their professional experience over the last few months, one word could sum it up – Surviving. Teachers all over the world did their best in the last few months to survive. They did their best to teach and to help their students maintain some sort of routine and comfort in this new reality. As teachers, we were never trained to be online teachers in virtual classrooms. That is not what we signed up for; we feel that we belong in our school. We are experts in teaching in physical classrooms, walking around, making eye contact, having conversations, seeing our students in person, engaging in human interactions. Remote learning took all of this away from us.

The main goal of this course is to help teachers get back on track – from survival mode to a professional stand: As teachers, we know that practice makes perfect, and that we learn and then teach others. That’s what teachers do, all over the world.

NOW it is our time to learn and prepare for the next school year. Now it is our chance to become Blended Teachers, who are able to utilize and apply the right mixture of synchronous and asynchronous teaching or in-person and virtual teaching, so we could bring back what remote learning took away: the human interaction and our student engagement.

This course will follow three concurrent paths:

A theoretical Pedagogical Path – Understanding the pedagogy behind remote, digital and blended learning.
A Peer Learning Path – Learn from other teachers their best practices.
A Practical Path – Transforming the core principles and methodologies presented over the units of this course and applying it hands on to your classroom.
Choose Your Blend: Each unit will be presented by a different professional educator to demonstrate the wide variety of applications available for teachers. Each teacher should choose his or her path based on their teaching style and experience and what best fits their classes, students, school environment and culture.

Unit 1: Where Are We Now? A teacher’s Guide to Digital Pedagogy and Blended Learning
Presented by Amos Raban
Description: This unit focuses on laying the groundwork of the course. The theoretical concepts of digital pedagogy and blended learning will be presented with practical examples how they could help teachers better strategize and implement their teaching next year.

Objectives:

The teachers will learn the theoretical concepts of Remote learning, digital pedagogy and blended learning.
The teachers will be presented with an overview of the course objectives and units.
The teachers will be presented with the course project.

Unit 2: Remote Learning: A Digital Teacher’s-Eye View
Presented by Michal Doron
Description: This unit will teach you how to incorporate digital tools in a remote learning environment. In this unit, you will get to know different digital tools that will help you plan a dynamic class or project. These tools can be used in a variety of classroom settings: virtual, physical or both – blended learning.

Objectives:

The teachers will get acquainted with a variety of online digital tools.
The teachers will utilize the tools best fit their school environment.

Unit 3: Being Present: Engaging Students in Remote Learning
Presented by Tomer Baratz
Description: In this unit, we will discuss different ways for effective use of video sessions and online environments during online learning.

Objectives:

The teachers will be able identify the advantages of blended learning for their classes.
The teachers will discuss and practice different ways for increasing their students’ engagement during online video sessions.

Unit 4: The Open Classroom: Why Google isn’t the Enemy
Presented by Dr. Roni Ratzkovsky
Description: What else are our students doing while listening to us teach online? Are they surfing the internet? Texting with friends? Talking to siblings, or just sleeping? In this lesson, we will learn techniques to engage students in online learning while using the surrounding “distractions” – the home and the internet. We will try to experience ourselves what our students experience and gain insights through self-reflection.

Objectives:

The teachers will understand the concept of the open-ended classroom and experience ways to bring the outside world into the classroom.
The teachers will understand the importance of the teacher as moderator, teaching the students critical thinking skills and mediating the outside and online world to the students.
The teachers will experience various tools that help engage the students in online learning and keep them active during class: online polls, interactive boards, collaborative presentations.
Requirements:

An active gmail address (to be sent in advance)

Unit 5: Could Digital Pedagogy Bridge the Gap? The Case of Online “Classrooms without Borders”: A Tale of Two Countries
Presented by Dr. Shamir Yeger
Description: This unit will deal with the opportunities presented by quality online class materials aimed at tearing down and bridging geographical, cultural, lingual and institutional barriers. A case study will be presented: The “From Here to There”, a joint German-Israeli governmental educational initiative that includes an interdisciplinary course focusing on immigration issues both countries face in the present and had faced in the past. The course is available in both German and Hebrew and includes professional development for teachers in both countries. A discussion regarding the possibilities for your classroom will follow.

Objectives:

The teachers will understand the concept and potential of interdisciplinary and multicultural online courses.
The teachers will begin to plan their course project.

Unit 6: Where are we going? Planning for next school year using Blended Learning and Digital Pedagogy
Presented by Amos Raban
Description: In this final unit, the teachers will present their projects and reflect on their plans for the next school year.

Amos Raban

Amos Raban, MA, works for Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Kibbutzim College of Education. His work focuses on innovation, digital pedagogy, and social equity.

At the Ministry of Education, he is leading and coordinating several multi-disciplinary, alternative assessment projects and professional development courses.

At the Kibbutzim College of Education, he is a lecturer and social sciences teacher trainer. He teaches several courses that deal with innovation and digital pedagogy.

He is a 12-year veteran History and Civics teacher at the Lady Davis High School in Tel Aviv. His last role at the school was leading the pedagogical innovation. He received several accolades for his alternative assessment and multi-cultural projects in both History and Civics.

He holds a B.A. in History and Political Science and an M.A. in Leadership and Management in Education from Tel Aviv University.

The full inclusion of people of all abilities is a core value of Classrooms Without Borders. For questions or to make requests for special accommodations contact [email protected]