Schoolhouse Rock and Blended Learning

I'm often asked how I got involved with blended learning and virtual classrooms. Now it probably wouldn't surprise you to hear that have always been a fan of alternative ways of learning things. I remember being in elementary school, and spending my afternoon watching the television lineup on the local public television station. The first show would be "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood,' which taught me to be kind to my neighbors and always take my shoes off before I enter the house. That was followed by "Sesame Street," which taught me to compare and contrast unlike objects. Do you remember, "one of these things it's not like the other?" And finally, "The Electric Company" taught me that nothing was more powerful than a silent "e." But public television was nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to Saturday morning cartoons. While some of my peers were watching superheroes and listening to talking animals, I was waiting for the three-minute educational videos that came on during the commercials.

It was called "Schoolhouse Rock." This show taught me the order of the planets in our solar system. It taught me basic multiplication tables, how a bill became a law, and it even taught me basic grammar. It probably taught you basic grammar, too. Do you remember, "Conjunction junction, what's your function?" Some of you are singing it with me. These were my first self-paced learning experiences, and they were all taught on television. But not just on television.

But in hand-drawn cartoons. It was low-tech. They were short, but they were really really effective. We remember them now. Can you say that about most of the high-tech, expensive eLearning you usually see today? Of course, I really couldn't apply much of what I learned on television, because I didn't have context. I needed live interaction with experts to put that learning to work. Interaction with parents, or with teachers, or sometimes older kids. So I really had my first blended experience before I was seven years old. And this stuff works. Blended learning works. I've dedicated my career to helping people like you become experts at blended learning in the virtual classroom. Think about what's worked for you what worked for you when you were a child, what worked for you yesterday, what's working for your children. And take that, take those strong characteristics of how learning truly works and make that part of your blended learning design. .

As found on Youtube