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TEACHING. LEARNING. COMMUNICATION. COLLABORATION.
Blender Exchange is a “One-Stop Shop” for digital Educational Resources — a new and exciting Destination for both Educators and Learners. With contributions from Educators and Publishers nationwide, we aim to make Blender Exchange (the “Exchange”) the industry’s richest collection of high-quality content, best-practice lessons and resources, Professional Development, Blender Tools, Communities, Collaboration, and Live Events. Knowing what we know about the creativity of our community, the possibilities for the Exchange seem limitless!
Collaboration and sharing across US Districts and among Educators at large is foundational to the Exchange. The dynamic of sharing resources, lessons, and best practices is much talked about in Education and we plan to facilitate that with the right content and tools. This bold initiative was made possible through the assistance of our charter member, Palm Beach County Public Schools FL, and with the plans for innovative member districts to follow. It will be a gathering!
BlenderExchange is also the answer to this frequently asked question by technology experts: Is there a SaaS version of BlenderLearn? Now there is. The full power of the BlenderLearn platform and tools will be available on the Exchange. It is a full Cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) model of BlenderLearn, available by module and by subscription.This enables us to serve Districts and Educational organizations of any size, efficiently and economically.
“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”
Sir Kenneth Robinson
Vail Symposium 2016
Blender Exchange is the right
shopping experience for
Curriculum Writers
Curriculum writers organize and create content for their Districts. The Exchange promotes the mining and swapping of ideas and materials. Curriculum Writers will be able to provide content to the Content Library and retrieve resources.
Teachers
& Educators
The Exchange was founded to create a large and rich library of FREE K-12 best-practice lessons and resources. Teachers can both find good materials and contribute their resources.
SEL
Coordinators
Social and Emotional Learning programs are rapidly developing nationwide, in support
of students and their teachers. The Exchange will be an important home to growing collections of SEL resources. Dashboards and Profiles found on the Exchange will enable a 360-degree view of learners and encourage goals management.
Career Counselors
The challenge of “one-to-many” service is common for Career Counselors. In order to provide some real help, Blender Exchange will provide Counselors with access to the ScholarPath tools, and to communities where Counselors can share best practices and get support from experts and peers.
Principals
Schools come in all shapes and sizes, with a lot in common and unique challenges. Exchange Communities will encourage Principals to share their own job-specific tips on how to help students and teachers survive and thrive in these challenging times.
Parents
Parents are looking for good resources to help their kids — whether that is digital content, tutoring resources, or simple how to’s. Parents will be able to search the robust Content Library, access free resources, buy courses, and Communicate with District Educators and other Parents in dynamic Communities.
Blender Exchange is configured with the power of the BlenderLearn platform, utilizing Cloud Services to deliver Content Management, Learner Profile, Learning Management, and Professional Development applications.
Learner Profiles & Dashboard
Easy-to-use, configurable and scalable, Learner Profiles support Personalized Learning, Social Emotional Learning, and Career & College Readiness programs. Learner Profiles provide a 360-degree view of the user — student, teacher, learner — and provide the tools for ongoing data gathering. Learner Profiles have been piloted in K-12 and extended to corporate learning, higher Ed and professional development.
Virtual Learning Center
Exchange Members have access to the Learning Center, home to the Learning Management (LMS) and Professional Development applications. Instructors can build courses, give assignments, publish relevant resources, administer surveys and assessments, hold classes and grade and certify course completion. Students register, are notified of assignments and are off and running. Both Instructors and Students can create, manage and participate in collaborative groups, forums, discussions and other social activities through the integration of Communities, unique to the Blender architecture.
Great Content
A Content Marketplace, the Exchange provides members with access to District-shared content, Publisher content, and Instructor-created content. The Exchange uses Blender’s CMS to provide a robust Content Library and a feature-rich Course Catalog. This provides users with the ability to create, import, organize, meta tag, search and retrieve digital resources that meet their needs.
Collaboration & Sharing
Communities are the Collaborative spaces within Blender. They allow for a unique and dynamic convergence of curated Instructional Content, with the engagement of Forums, Discussions, Surveys, Pulse Checks, and other Social Interactions. Communities can span subject and interest areas within an organization – and across multiple Schools, Districts and Organizations. Active Communities will be free to all members of the Exchange.
Tools for Teachers & Learners
Since Instructors spend at least 30 percent of their time in preparation for classes, the Exchange aims to ease that workload with access to new content and curriculum, and with a robust set of tools — for lesson planning, course creation and management, communication with students, and collaboration with peers. Professional Development is integrated with the teaching and learning cycles.
Virtual Classroom & Meetings
Virtual Learning has grown over the years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has turned Virtual Classroom and Virtual Meeting into household words. Every organization has its favorites — Zoom, Microsoft, Google, Webex and so on. Blender’s Learning Center and Communities integrate content and activity with these technologies.
Watson Artificial Intelligence (AI)
As AI moves into every part of our lives, we naturally explore how AI can improve Education practice. For example, with Watson AI content can be automatically meta tagged, a Virtual Assistant can help a teacher prepare lessons and find content, and Watson Discovery makes it possible to seek, find and vet new content from across the Internet. Watson AI is part of our IBM partnership.
IBM Cloud Hosting
Blender Exchange is hosted on IBM’s Cloud Services. Our Gold-Partner IBM provides maximum security for all of our Blender applications, for content and customer data, and for management making Cloud Hosting both safer and cost-friendly.
Digital Portfolios
A Portfolio can be assigned to any Exchange member. It is a digital repository for artifacts created by learners of all ages, to demonstrate completion of assignments, and mastery of learning objectives. Artifacts can be tagged to specific goals and academic standards. The portfolio supports documents, links, text and audio/video entries. Portfolios are enabled with a feedback loop for grading and peer review.
Google Compatibility
Blender is compatible with the full Google suite used by Educators and Business people nationwide. Blender Exchange is also able to organize and manage content that can be assigned to Google Classroom, and Blender tools provide content management to the Google environment.
Reports & Data Analytics
Educators and their organizations measure the teaching and learning process through outcomes. Our reports package will measure performance and track outcomes for system usage, course usage, resource access, Professional Development and many other factors.
Hear from Our Customers
“In the School District of Palm Beach County, we strive to provide easy access to the highest quality ‘Standards Based Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum’. We use Blender as a seamless and web-based organizer that’s designed to be a course and user specific ‘one-stop-shop’ of instructional references and digital curriculum resources. Blender allows us to strategically support and coach all of our teachers to effectively establish objectives, plan, instruct, analyze and reflect to adjust to meet the academic needs of every student.”
Jonathan Decker
Technology Program Specialist
School District of Palm Beach County
Trusted by the Greatest
