Jewish Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Richard D. Solomon's Blog

We just completed two blended online learning courses in which we trained 30 education directors of Jewish complementary schools in the US and Mexico to create online Communities of Practice for their teachers and other members of the school community. The results of these two web courses demonstrate that flipping the classroom methods (i.e. video tutorials with online collaborative assignments) can be used to improve the professional practices of school administrators and instructional leaders in the delivery of staff development to their teachers.

A study of these courses offers evidence to support these four propositions:

• We can do staff development in-service training in a totally online learning environment.
• We can flip the classroom in a blended online learning environment without the need for face to face in-service staff development. In no way, does this study negate or diminish the importance of onsite staff development. In an ideal situation online and onsite staff development reinforce each other.
• We have the ability to e-mentor education directors and other educational leaders via the various tutorials and individualized tutoring we have provided.
• We can use the training of trainers (ToT) model to empower education directors/leaders to train selected staff at their complementary and day schools.

View a sample course assignment here.