Blended Interactions

As I read through this article I made many connections to the different forms of delivering instruction.  My initial reaction was that I related mostly with the concierge learning style because of the type of approach the instructor uses when delivering instruction to students.   Providing instruction as well as allowing students to investigate and formulate their own knowledge about different concepts, creates a deeper level of understanding.  As an educator, I believe that creating a learning environment that allows the learner to construct their own knowledge based on their previous experiences, as well as guidance from the teacher, will create a more meaningful and understandable learning environment.  While I was completing my undergrad at U of M, I realized what type of educator I wanted to be.  The type of learning environment I always engaged in at U of M was a constructivist classroom.  Walking into my classes everyday was always different.  There would be times where I would walk into the classroom and on the table sat a set of directions and materials to use to try and construct knowledge about a particular concept we were going to learn about in math or science.  This allowed me to make mistakes along the way, as I was trying to answer a set of questions or complete a project.  I developed a deeper meaning of all of these concepts from this teaching style.  I used the information I already knew and used new concepts and information to form my new knowledge.  So, over the years I have tried to incorporate this type of method within my lessons and objectives and have seen much success.

As I continued to read chapter 2, I also realized there was a connection between concierge learning as well as network administrator.  The network administrator's role is to provides many connections between a variety of concepts, so that the students and their learning can become the center of a personal network.  So helping students make connections and creating networks with different concepts, helps students develop an understanding and allows them to extend their learning into a variety of different curriculum.  This form of critical thinking provides students with more opportunities to formulate and develop deeper understanding of information.  These two forms of learning are great learning environments for blended coursework.