Personalized learning and models of blended and online learning developed as alternatives to the one-size-fits-all Industrial Age era classroom. We no longer live in an era when all students have to learn the same thing at the same time in the same room and are assessed by the same accountability measurement. There is no denying that public schools are still beholden to accountability benchmarks for funding, such as standardized testing. Teacher-designers must have freedom to customize instructional delivery, learning activities, learner interactions, and ways to demonstrate understanding to meet the needs of their students and the requirements of their learning goals.

The beauty of taking a course about blended and online learning during Fall 2020 was that I had multiple opportunities to observe instances of the models described by my EDIT 761 curriculum committee. EDIT 761, an exemplary example, was delivered mostly asynchronously with a COPLS framework and some opportunities for synchronous learner-teacher and learner-learner interactions. As mentioned in my Reimagined Lesson Reflection, each model has its own benefits and limitations. Teacher-designers have the flexibility to choose the model or blend of models that meet their desired learning goals and the technological, instructional, environmental, and interactional affordance requirements.

The connection between what I have learned and how I can apply it is more relevant now than it has ever been. Being a teacher in emergency remote learning and now distance learning classrooms, I have trialed pieces of what I have learned in my own middle and high school classrooms. In spring 2020, I thought "synchronous" was a type of instruction that I was required to provide for 3o minutes once per week for each class. I now understand how to design learning activities that involve a blend of online activities and direct instruction, are synchronous or asynchronous, or utilize a station rotation or flipped learning approach (as an example). I select which models to use based on my learning goals and the population of learners. For example, the station rotation model of blended learning works really well with my Latin 1 class, which is a mixture of sixteen squirrely 7th-10th grade students pooled from two schools (yes, really). I would not use station rotation with my Latin 6 AP class of three 12th grade students, who work better with a blend of flipped learning, lab rotation, and synchronous models of learning.

The Designing Digital Learning in Schools graduate program has trained me to be the change I want to see in my classroom (to borrow from a famous saying). Using flashy technology or trying someone else's approach to teaching will not result in change unless I have thoughtfully considered how the tech or the approach is supporting my own learning goals and affordance requirements. Blended and online learning is not taking what we do in a brick and mortar classroom and digitizing it--it is so much more complicated than that. Aspects of PICKLE, AeCTS, ABCS, and other DDLS principles must be present in blended and online spaces, but there is the additional consideration of how to incorporate each of these design aspects within a blended and online space.

The tool of affordance analysis can be used to determine which tools to use to engage online learners in authentic, background building, constructing, and sharing activities for knowledge transfer and meaning making. Learning and knowledge must still be situated in the structures, processes, and discourses of an authentic domain of practice. Learning management systems must have a user friendly learner interface that presents learning goals and a clear outcome, as well as engages learners in visible thinking and supports any software needs. Online learners must be literate across multiple media, be able to use information, engage in critical thinking and the solving of authentic and engaging problems, be community participants in the online space, have knowledge, and make decisions about how to ethically go about learning and submitting their own work in the world of "Google, copy, paste, submit."

Technology is the bridge that connects us, enables us to access knowledge, and empowers us to make and share meaning across time and space. It is a necessity in all of these remote, distance, online, blended, and concurrent/HyFlex/hybrid models of school that have replaced the shut down school buildings. We stay connected via Chromebooks, Google Meet, Schoology, and good WiFi. Using technology for the sake of technology, however, does not indicate good lesson design and is not a good strategy for passing a formal evaluation observation.

A teacher-designer who knows how to effectively utilize technology with a human touch is a bigger necessity. I learned about one model of online learning, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), that delivers learning to anyone at any time and from any place. Open access to education is wonderful, but MOOC learners receive little personalization to their learning needs or instructor involvement in their learning process. Even fully virtual schools, such as the Florida Virtual High School, or supplemental virtual schools, such as Virtual Virginia, have online teachers or teacher-mentors on the other side of the screen to support PK-12 learners, who are still learning how to learn.

Teachers who utilize blended and online models of learning must attend to the personalization and interactive experience of the learners in their care. Interactions between learner-learner, learner-teacher, and learner-content must be incorporated into learning activities to replace the peer, educator, and content interactions present in a brick and mortar classroom. Teacher-designers must select appropriate digital tools to support those interactions. Additionally, a teacher-designer must consider design aspects of learner interface interactions of the online course itself: what supports are present to support the progress and self-regulation of learners as they progress through learning modules? Affordance analysis of each and every digital tool is a must. Completing an affordance analysis of the Voicethread tool raised my appreciation for the time that goes into selecting appropriate technology for the learning goals of an online course.

I felt more connected to my students than ever this year, as I assumed the role of online learner in March 2020 when GMU classes went online. I learned very quickly that I needed human interactions--at least from my instructor--in order to progress towards my learning goals and to know that I was successful in meeting them. When any option to collaborate was presented, I quickly seized this opportunity and organized a group. This was the case for both the Reimagine Lesson and planning a Mini-Workshop. I crave learner-learner and learner-teacher interactions to support my acquisition and construction of knowledge. This behavior aligns with everything that I have learned about learning being social and knowledge being constructed collaboratively.

I also learned that I have to be willing to play with what I am learning to learn how to apply it correctly. I need to feel comfortable trialing different models or blends of models to see whether they are a good fit for the content learning goals and for the learners in my charge. Additionally, I will not realistically be writing ten-page design documents for each time I want to use a model that I learned about in EDIT 761, but I now know that I have the ability to engage in professional discourse about the selection of models of blended and online learning for learning goals and personalized learning. I feel confident in my ability to refer back to my curriculum committee's guide on the models of blended and online learning if I need a community of practice-compiled resource to address my professional design and learning needs. This resource will be invaluable to me if I ever need to engage my colleagues in professional learning on this topic.