Hello fellow educators, this is podcast number 87.  Today I want to continue our discussion of "Blended Learning." This is term most online educators are using for blending technology, online curriculum and tools with the traditional classroom. I would include home school education in this discussion as well. If you have been listening to our podcasts, since we started up this school year in September, you would realize this has taken up most of our discussion. This summer I recently read two very important books on the future of education that seem to point the way to this direction. The first "Disrupting Class" by Harvard professor, Clayton Christensen, predicts that online education will be the most disruptive force in education in the next 20 years. He goes as far as to predict 50% of high school education will include some form of online technology by 2020. His main premise is that any innovation, given the right circumstances, will eventually disrupt the market from which the innovation came from. I would recommend you go back and listen to podcast number 76 where I focus on Christensen's concept of "Disruptive Innovation." What we have come to realize is that Heritage Christian Schools has become a leader in educational disruptive technology. Last week I uploaded my podcast from the iNACOL Conference in Austin Texas. iNACOL stands for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. I had the opportunity to become acquainted with our American counterparts in Online Education both in the public and private school sector. I was invited to speak to and network with the Faith Based schools who are working in the field of online education. Probably the biggest revelation from attending the conference was seeing how far ahead we are as a school and how far British Columbia is ahead as an educational jurisdiction. When comparing how much online saturation has occurred in various regions the highest number in the US was Florida at 3%. Another words 3% of the students in this state are supplementing their school program with Online Learning. BC's saturation rate was 10% making us the most Online educational jurisdiction in North America and Heritage Christian Online School is the largest DL program in BC. I believe a great deal of our success can be attributed to developing innovative programs that serves the needs of our Home School students and distance learners. As Christensen puts it in "Disrupting Class" we have taken our innovation to an underserved market thus we have been able to grow and develop our online product. As our programs, courses and systems of delivery continue to improve more and more those in conventional forms of education will want the freedom and innovation that online can provide.

The second book I read this last summer was "Liberating Learning." I had the opportunity to hear the author of this book at the iNACOL conference, Terry Moe. This book also predicts that online learning will be a transformative innovation in schools. Moe is a political science professor and focuses on the sociological impact that this form of education will have on learning in North America. I found the book valuable because of the larger context we are working in. We are developing ideas and methodologies in education that will impact the entire educational system. In spending time with our Faith based counterparts in Texas I saw even more succinctly the distinct role we can have in leading Christian Schools in the areas of online curriculum development, cross enrolment programs and specifically blended approaches to integrating technology in the Christian classroom.

If you listened in last week we were able to interview Stephen Harris from Sydney Australia. As I said last week, I had the opportunity to visit his school last month and was amazed by the ways they have integrated technology into their campus school. Their online educational approach has evolved in a very different process to ours here in BC. First let me point out that their funding structure is different from ours. Private schools in Australia receive partial funding in about the same proportion as we received here in BC but they also receive considerable funds for their facilities, whereas we do not receive any funding for buildings whatsoever. Thus they have been able to build some amazing facilities.

One of our own staff at Heritage, Jody Ranchoux, our grade 2 teacher, took the time to visit Stephen Harris' school through their website and here where her comments:  "I was particularly intrigued by the conversation with Mr. Harris. I decided to look at their school's website. www.nbcs.nsw.edu.au. I checked out the photo gallery of the school construction. The architecture of the building seems to resemble a "ship" with porthole windows into the world. The premise to help "students navigate through the vast and exponentially expanding ocean of information."  Very clever and interesting! I also scanned through a few of their interesting research papers on the following link: www.scil.nsw.edu.au/research/."

Jody went on to say:

"I think there are some misconceptions about how technology can enhance our teaching. It is especially difficult to "wrap" our minds around it, when our daily teaching involves little, if any, use of technology in the classroom. I think it is important that we begin using more technology in the classroom, but we need the tools and the professional development to begin this journey. Our school would be wise to begin slowly moving in this direction, so that the shift into a "technological teaching world" is smoother and not a severe culture shock."

Thank you for your comments Jody. As we go done this path to deliberately incorporate technology into our teaching practices a willing attitude towards change is very important. We appreciate your perspective. We don't want to employ technology for technologies sake. We want to find good innovative solutions that will help us do a better job in all the areas of education we have been called to here at Heritage.

What has happened at Northern Beaches is a collective process of a school breaking out of the what we have come to imagine the traditional classroom approach and using technology to aid in their innovative methods. It has emerged from within their school leadership and inspired by Stephen Harris. As we contrast our schools to Northern Beaches you will see that our online programs have grown in dramatic fashion. By comparison our online program is many dozens of times larger than theirs and our curriculum has developed much quicker and with more innovation. But we built our online school separate from our campus program. They have been far more organic in their online curriculum and systems development because they used their classroom teachers to develop their online courses while they are still involved in teaching in the classroom. Thus their approach and courses follow a more classroom...ish approach. Presently their school has 1400 full time campus students and another 300 cross enrolled students from other schools around New South Wales. One other hindrance to their online development has been the government's policy that any online student must spend 15 days in a face to face environment with their online school, thus they must bring students into the campus creating significant difficulties for the learner. Again, our BC legislators have shown themselves to be very wise in not putting unusual restrictions on our schools and makes us the best place on earth, and I do not mean this figuratively in any way, to do what we are doing.

What we can learn from Stephen, his school and his research institute called: the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning is how to successfully blend our incredible assets in the Online School with our Campus program.  Unfortunately, our process is less organic than Northern Beaches but it appears that God has provided a different track for us at Heritage. This is why a willing attitude like that shown by Jody Ranchoux is critical. Not every attempt to integrate online with our campus program has been successful, in fact, the online program has caused a great deal of disruption within our campus school. Don't get me wrong, I think all of our campus teachers are thankful for the program and joint resources it has provided such as: increased library staff and support, special education support, some shared teachers and salaries which we would not be able to afford, our shared computer lab, our tech team, etc etc. But where we have yet to see some real impact on our campus school programs is bringing together the best of online curriculum to the best of our campus community and classroom programs. It is coming and I pray that we will find a way to grow this in a more organic fashion. One thing is for sure, we are in a Digital World and we have to use the tools of this world to help train the next generation if they are going to become relevant participants and world changers in the cultures to come. Don't forget our kindergarteners graduation in 2023. A year that still sounds more like an episode of Star Trek rather than just 13 years away.

Stephen Harris presented at the iNACOL a paper entitled: Online and Blended Learning: transforming pedagogy in a K-12 School. I had the privilege of attending this workshop and want to share some of the principles in our podcast. Ideally I would have like to given you a recording of the session but this is unavailable. Many of his ideas come from travelling to schools several years ago and seeing how they are blending technology in their schools. He indicated that the two places where he observed very good blended learning practices were in Iceland and Finland and some of their examples have shaped his thinking on this. He presented Nine Key Factors for success which I would like to present to you with a bit of commentary of where we are at with these factors. Obviously we won't get to all nine today but will continue this next week.

1. Clearly articulated vision for online course delivery within the school

''The success of an online program depends largely on a clear and cohesive vision providing direction Sigurlaug Kristmannsdttir, Verzlunarskdli Islands, Reykjavik. Clearly articulated and evident whole school vision in relation to the use of online education in the classroom (both real and virtual) appears to be a key prerequisite or sustaining success in web-based learning. The success of online course delivery was evidently directly linked to the strength, purpose, clarity and direction of whole school vision in connection with managed online learning environments across the school. Specific program goals, linked to an overarching vision statement, seem to be highly significant in facilitating a number of important outcomes."

This is singularly the most important factor in our success at Heritage. I am not trying to blow my own horn here, by any means but my involvement as the primary leader in this innovation in our schools is crucial to our success.  I am the primary visionary for all of our educational programs and if I am not leading the charge, particularly in such a disruptive innovation then our schools would not make the changes necessary to get us where we need to go. I am able to move budgets, personnel, equipment, training, marketing, programs and ultimately the entire community in the directions that we need to go. I have observed a number of programs and schools that continue to flounder because the school visionary leader does not comprehend the direction. I am not saying that I need to know how to do everything that we are doing online and with technology. I just need to know what is possible,  point the community in the right direction and find staff that will take us there. I know what my job is as the Leader of Heritage Christian Schools and, by God's grace I will keep doing just that, pointing the direction that we are to go. Of course I have to be able to see that direction first. This is why many school leaders do not take their programs into innovation. They simply can't see it.

2. Evidence of considered approaches to a specific online pedagogy

"Teachers working within the online environment need to have a clear understanding of the pedagogy underpinning all classroom practice and choices in both their real and virtual classrooms. Teachers need to become artists within the virtual classroom - using the creativity and flexibility of the online environment to create a sense of dynamic interaction. Only accomplished educators should be allocated classes in an online environment; those able to transfer their understanding of good practice in the real classroom into the virtual environment. Teachers should also be prepared for the additional initial effort required to develop exemplar online material, whether for blended or fully distance delivery."

Here is where I think our different approach to developing online courses has paid off for us at Heritage. Remember  Northern Beaches developed its online courses from a classroom environment whereas our course development has been more geared to the home schooler and distance learner. We have worked for a less "schoolish" approach to our courses although most of our courses still follow somewhat of a classroom style.  I love the language that he uses calling for an artistic element to the virtual classroom. If we try to force our courses into a classroom style though we could lose the flexibility and creativity that makes them so dynamic. As we develop our online curriculum into an even more flexible environment we have to build them in such a way as to meet multiple needs. We have home school students who have the greatest amount of freedom in how they accomplish their education. We have distance learners who, for many different reasons, are not in a campus environment. This year we will serve close to 2000 cross enrolled students who need the courses delivered in such a way that they are able to supplement their schooling and finally, we are including the mandate of incorporating our online tools into the classroom and campus programs. These multiple goals and client base is a big challenge to our developers, enhancers and teachers. But, if we can succeed in creating and using these tools then I believe we will continue to stay ahead of the pack as a school and influence the entire Christian School movement as we make our way into the 21st Century. I think it is important for us to take the lead because of the amazing people God has given us. People who are dedicated to discipleship based Christian education.  We will take this up in next week's podcast.

Please email us your comments and thoughts on today’s podcast. Also, if you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book or send you the download link for the audio version of, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address. Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian education.