DELETE: Add your own videos and quotes where they fit, adding text to contextualize them and tie them to the theory. Change content of tables to fit your content area. 

13-1.1 Blending in Music Teaching

The first question you should ask yourself before embarking on the journey of blended teaching is “Why blend?” Teachers who are still searching for their answer to this question may end up spending a lot of time and energy implementing changes that do not serve any larger goal or purpose.

In the video below, Angela Harmon explains how blended teaching has helped her know her students better. What reasons might you have for blending?

Teachers Talk: Knowing More about Each Student

Angela Harmon

I have found that the in-person student and the online student can be two very different people. In class we are either practicing performing or actually performing. Performing brings out certain characteristics of my students. I see another student when I interact with them online. By adding the online component, I get to know students that I wouldn’t have known so well just seeing them in-person.

13-1.2 Reasons for Blending

There are three primary reasons why teachers choose blended teaching:

• Improved learning outcomes—Blended classrooms can increase personalization, allow for more individual and small group instruction, and make better use of classroom time. 
• Increased access and flexibility—In blended classrooms students have access to materials anywhere and anytime. In addition, they have access to resources and activities that are unavailable to them without an online component. 
• Increased efficiency/cost—Blended classrooms can help students complete learning activities in less time and with less energy, reduce printing costs, and help students stay more organized (less likely to lose assignments).

Brianne explains how blended teaching allows her to be both more efficient as a teacher and more creative. (Video)

Oftentime teachers have multiple reasons for blending, but almost always one of these three reasons is primary in their minds. Table 1 below shows some simple ELA examples and how they might help the teacher to achieve multiple purposes simultaneously.

Table 1

Examples of Multiple Purposes for a Blended Music Activity (Replace with examples that fit your content)

As you go through the music chapters, you will be able to reflect on what you have learned and design your own activities and classroom in a Blended Teaching Workbook. Click on the "Blended Teaching Workbook" button to access your workbook.

13-1.3 Common Challenges to Teaching/Learning Music: Problems of Practice

All teachers face challenges. It's part of the nature of sharing a learning journey with a large number of young people. For many music teachers, making sure students have the necessary musical background can be challenging, especially in choral courses. Teachers like Tracy Warby, below, found that blended teaching allowed them to address the needs of students at many different levels of musical knowledge.  

Teachers Talk: Addressing the Needs of Beginning Choral Students

Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-MRjr

Your choice to blend will be more meaningful to you and your students if it helps to address challenges that you and your students face in the traditional non-blended classroom. We refer to these challenges as “problems of practice.”

Problems of practice can fall under any of the three purposes outlined in section 1.1. However, the most meaningful and powerful problems of practice for teachers deal directly with improving learning outcomes for their students.

Fig. 1

Problems of Practice in Music (send me the problems of practice you would like to include. I will recreate the graphic with your content and upload it to the chapter.)

These five pathways are a powerful tool to help you think deeply about problems of practice that are relevant to you. Once you identify specific challenges in your current approach to teaching, you will be able to begin to explore what online approaches may be combined with your in-person approaches to make a better experience for your students and you alike. This process engergizes you and your teaching. Teachers who choose to blend often find that they enjoy teaching in new and fulfilling ways.

Perhaps one of your problems of practice is helping students own their own learning. Blended teaching, as Tracy Warby shows, can help.

Teachers Talk: Increased Student Ownership

Tracy Warby

Teachers Talk: Increased Student Ownership

Before I started using technology, I thought some students just weren’t interested in learning. Some students just got lost in the cracks, especially younger ones. However, since they’ve been able to see their scores on tests in different areas of music, and they can see where they need to improve, I’ve seen students who just keep trying over and over again. They are willing to work once they have the opportunity to do so. They’ve learned to take responsibility and ownership for their learning. 

In the next two quotes your teachers explain how blended teaching has empowered their teaching.

Teachers Talk: Blended Teaching and Better Learning

Tracy Warby

I started blending my classroom mostly so I could take back my rehearsal time. But the benefits have gone so much beyond my simple goal. What I didn’t realize was that it would actually help students learn more. Students who struggle are actually catching the vision in a way they never did in a traditional choral setting. The online work they’re doing is improving their musicianship, and their sight singing is better. They sing better and have better rhythm. Rehearsals are more fun. We can cover more music and harder music in less time. We were able to sing a four-part harmony a capella, completely in tune, with great rhythm. We couldn’t have done that without the blended learning we were doing.

Teachers Talk: Burnout and the Power of Student Reflections

Angela Harmon

The last few years, I’ll be honest, I’ve felt a little burnout. My job is really draining. One thing that has helped is reading my students’ online reflections from their assignments. They write about what music means to them, what they discover about music and through music, what music is doing for them, and how it’s helping their family or neighbors. Not every student does this but enough do that it really helps me remember why I do what I do. It energizes me, and keeps me going.

Finding Your Problems of Practice

Now that you have reviewed the five pathways to identifying problems of practice, it is your turn to look at your own practice and try to identify a couple of challenges that you can consider as you continue throughout these music chapters. What student outcomes and teaching practices would you like to improve? What stands in the way of your teaching having the impact you would like it to have?

 Overcoming Challenges of Blended Teaching

One of the concerns of teachers new to blended teaching is the learning curve of learning how to use and manage technology in the classroom. Here's how Tracy Warby addressed this challenge.

Teachers Talk: Giving Up My Ego

Tracy Warby

I think the hardest part for me in starting to blend my classroom was feeling so horribly stupid. It was humbling, after having taught a long time, to all of a sudden be a student and not feeling at all competent. I had to be okay with asking for a lot of help. As soon as I got over that barrier, I was fine. But I had to let go of my ego before I could learn. That was a bit of a challenge for me.