Blendspace

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https://www.blendspace.com/

This is a very interesting little program. It's basically a course creator and manager for the classroom, which lets your students self direct their learning through a number of guided steps. There is a lot of scope for you as a teacher to design pretty cool learning programmes using readily available information on the internet and lets you curate it for your learners.

Advantages: 
- One advantage I see is organisation. Creating a lesson is really easy, and because it google searches for you it is simple to find things that relate to your chosen topic.
- It is also very simple to use. Students can wade through content you have provided systematically.
- It is a great way to scaffold learners. Learners can start really simply and gradually progress through your learning program to immerse themselves deeper in the content.

Disadvantages:
- If we are trying to promote digital citizenship and independence in our learners, I don't think it's a great idea to be hand feeding them a whole lot of information. This programme seems to support the hand feeding of knowledge and then taking a test at the end. It is more content driven than it is skills driven which is not what is needed for innovative pedagogy.

How could this be used?
I see great potential in kick starting a programme with this. If you need students to have a bit of generic background knowledge before they launch into a self-directed learning programme then this could be a great way to do it.

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