What do blenders and teachers have in common?

...And no,  we are not talking about food!

Blended learning refers to the mixture of on-line and face to face learning. It is a new trend that is being implemented by teachers around the world.

Some of the advantages of this way of working is that students can choose where, how and when to learn encouraging the development of their autonomy and to assume responsibility for their own learning process.

Another positive aspects is that teachers can create a close learning environment where students have all the materials they need at their disposal. This factor is important, because they don't have to surf the web, avoiding the risk of encountering unreliable websites (for more information about criteria for evaluating websites, visit this post) and therefore working with wrong or inaccurate information.

Incorporating technology into the classroom has its advantages, but there are some things that technology cannot replace. As Sophie Partarrieu (2005) stated, face-to-face education is still needed for several reasons, among them "forming emotional relationships, emphathising and responding to the needs of individual students".

As future teachers, our aim is to strike a balance between these two types of learning, because extremes are dangerous.