Blendspace is a digital learning platform for teachers to access various resources and forge bundled and interactive lessons. It is the easiest way to blend your classroom with digital content.
Blendspace.com (now known as TES Teach) is an online tool by the education curriculum company TES.com. It is a tool that was created and is used for collecting and bundling information for multiple uses. It is not only accessible to the non-tech savvy teacher but also to the students across levels, grades, and subject areas. The goal of Blendspace is to enable teachers in seamless “blend” of into the classroom in an efficient and effective way.
Blendspace is a digital learning platform for teachers to access various resources and forge bundled and interactive lessons. It is the easiest way to blend your classroom with digital content. Certainly, blendspace is a tool that provides many possibilities. It is not only used as a method to curate resources or flipping of the classroom but also to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the classroom in the long run.
Why use Blendspace?
- Easy creation and collection of web resources,
- Integration of online content (such as videos, images, etc.) with a single link,
- Tracking of student progress,
- Personalization in student learning in real-time through “classes”,
- Easy accessibility of content, anywhere and anytime with an internet connection,
- A better way to communicate and collaborate with the students,
- To have a positive impression on the classroom,
- Differentiated lessons with different online materials and built-in assessment,
- Easy display and view, and
- Easy sharing and collaboration.
Technology has gone through a great revolution especially in the classrooms. It has given various new innovations which have made teaching simpler. Technology has taken teaching to a whole new level and yes it has made the boring dusty classrooms… the very colorful ones and so has Blendspace. It has certainly helped in the integration of technology into the classroom.
WAYS TO USE BLENDSPACE IN THE CLASSROOM
In every single class period, Instead of having to search for a particular YouTube video or a specific PowerPoint presentation the resources can be bundled up in Blendspace. A sequential lesson plan for different classes can be created. It is then super easy and accessible for the teacher as she/he has to just log into Blendspace at the beginning of each class period, select the correct bundled lesson for the class, and get the class started. It is very simplified and therefore, it means to deliver lesson plans with multimedia content is an excellent way to use this resource. But yes, there are many other ways to use Blendspace in the classroom as well including the following:
1. Flipped Classroom
Blendspace provides a variety of benefits to the teachers both personally and professionally. Teachers can create lessons for students, which are easy to access for them at home. It can be used for classroom flipping and to save the essential classroom time for student interactions, engaging activities, or having students work independently while teachers assist the progress of their activities and provide feedback one-on-one. Lessons can be created, using the TES Resources tab which can then be shared with students through a direct link or their class account. The easy access to many resources is given to the students by the teachers; hence, they can learn and gain knowledge outside of the classroom, on their own schedule, using whatever device and medium they choose.
This certainly means, that teaching and learning can take place anywhere at any time. It entirely depends on the choice of the students and the teachers, which proves the greatness of technology with the usefulness of tools like Blendspace. It can also be used as a storage medium for storing presentations, web tools, or one’s personal work. It helps in easy sharing of ideas with colleagues, organized teaching and learning materials with students and also promotes innovation in classrooms.
2. Grading and Tracking
Blendspace enables to create multiple-choice quizzes throughout a lesson bundle in order to check comprehension. It also enables to grade the multiple-choice quizzes easily. Quizzes act as an excellent opportunity for formative assessment. Preferably, they can also be used as a survey. If the teacher wants to include open-ended questions or more involved quizzes, he/she can input Google Forms, or just simply attach a Word document.
The teacher can easily set up classes, and students can have their own accounts. Once the students have set up their accounts, teachers can easily track what their students are working on. Comments can also be made by the students alongside the resources within each lesson. This tracking feature helps the teacher to have a record of where each student is in the lesson and what the student still needs to complete.
The blendspace accounts which have already been created (by other teachers and students) can also be accessed by users as long as that particular teacher or student has made it public. So, if any teacher or student needs a lesson on Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, they can search Blendspace to find one that has already been created by another teacher and use it. Some of these can even be saved.
Blendspace avoids fumbling with flash drives, losing valuable class time opening emails and attachments. All of the student projects can be uploaded into one lesson or added by their URL or, given it a title, and in class, only one lesson has to be opened to display the student work for the class to experience.
3. Lesson Building
Blendspace makes it easy to build a lesson for any level. It is all very simplified as one just has to choose the topic and then can start building it up by using the TES Resource tools provided such as Google Search, Educreations, Google Drive, Dropbox, uploads from your computer. All that needs to be done is to find the resource and drag it into place in the lesson. Items can be moved, boxes can be added and many things too fast and too simple. Certainly, blend space is a great way for sharing information; tracking of projects, and so much more. Once you are taken to the lesson screen; you can title your lesson, search for the suitable needed content and choose where to search using the icons on the black strip on the right, add text, or quizzes to the lesson, or insert content by dragging from the right or from your computer, and share it when you’re done. Once the lesson is completed, it can be made accessible to others by clicking Share near the top. It can be shared as a link, on Google Classroom, Twitter, or Facebook. It can be embedded, emailed and even a QR code can be created for linking it with the link. After that, the privacy policy and co-authors can also be changed. As the changes are made to the lessons, the work will be automatically saved.
READ MORE – 7 Active-Learning Strategies for Higher Education
4. Web Quests and Games
Teachers can send their students on a Web Quest to discover information and gain knowledge about new topics of study. There are other features on Blendspace as well; like fun and interactive games, Jeopardy etc. which take teaching to a whole new level and make it simpler and more interactive with the students.
One of the games suggested by Blendspace is A Dozen Dilemmas in which the teacher presents various real-world problems or dilemmas such as poverty, pollution etc. that need to be resolved. Students can select a dilemma and then create a Blendspace presentation in which they may provide solutions to the problem. This certainly helps the teachers to know about their students in a better way.
Talking about Jeopardy, it is about creating a game with Blendspace in which the students have to write the questions and the teacher has to give the answers, just like in the game Jeopardy!
5. Professional Development
Professional development sessions can be created by the teachers within Blendspace that can be shared out to teachers online or can be used during in-service sessions. These sessions help the teachers in improving the effectiveness of the class and the students as they are able to mold the students for a better tomorrow. A “notebook” or “scrapbook” of images, which are relatable to a particular topic of study (Image Bank), can also be created by both Teachers and students. The highlights from the marking period, semester, or year can be shared by the teachers with a virtual scrapbook, and students can do the same.
Blendspace can prove itself to be very effective in the classroom. It supports the idea of letting students choose which tech tools they will use. It motivates not only the teachers but also the students to show their interests in the classrooms and perform better in the long run.
