Becoming a Blendspace User

I was really pleased to be assigned Blendspace as the site I would present to others, because it was really easy to be enthused about the opportunities that this site presents. Both EndNote and Google Drive are useful sites for organizing online life for both students and teachers in that both allow you to store documents, organize your documents into folders, upload research, share with students and colleagues, etc. Whereas these two sites function as places to organize your documents and research, Blendspace acts as a forum where digital content is made accessible and easily organized for lesson planning.

The site is super user friendly. When you first enter the site, the front page makes a claim that lessons can be created in under 5 minutes. I did not understand how this was possible, but then when you go in to create a lesson, the site provides several easy drag-and-drop templates. You simply search for digital content, videos, images, audio, etc. from a variety of sites provided on the right side of the page (youtube, google, gooru, opened, educreations, etc.) and drag your desired content to a box to the left. You may then add text, or a quiz to the resource provided. The site also provides a user friendly pop up for creating a quiz, which includes a video tutorial. The string of digital content is combined into a lesson that teachers may share with the community on the site, but more importantly, that they may share with their students. A code is provided so that students may enter the page, view your lesson, and make comments and take quizzes on the information. Additionally, you may keep track of who is viewing your lesson as a way of assessing participants from your classes.

In presenting the site to my fellow students, some questions were asked that I didn't necessarily know the answer to, and required me to take a second look. For instance, we discovered that Blendspace also has a bookmarking tool that you can add to your search bar called "Blendspace It!" So then, if you find a resource outside of Blendspace that you would like to put into a lesson plan, you simply click the bookmark tool while you are on the site and it is placed in Blendspace for you. Additionally,  I discovered that, although you are not able to follow individual teachers on the site, if you like a lesson using a heart icon the right side of the screen, that lesson is added to your homepage. Although I wouldn't become reliant on Blendspace for the majority of my lessons, I think that it is certainly a useful tool for differentiating instruction and providing digital content in a way that is easily accessible to all parties involved.

I also like that Blendspace does much of the work of filtering out digital content that would not be appropriate for the classroom context. When I typed in Shakespeare on the youtube tab, I was not immediately bombarded with content that was not educational, like video clips from Shakespeare in Love or something of the like. Most of the content seemed relevant, which saves so much time because, let's be real--how much time do you spend sorting through muck to find something you can actually use? Too much. Nobody has time for that.