The Boundless Classroom: Designing Purposeful Instruction for Any Learning Environment

Discover how to plan effective blended instruction with purpose and intention with help from this definitive, practical guide to lesson design.

A global pandemic hit our world and education has forever changed. But have your instructional practices changed? Teachers must now leverage technology to provide students with high-quality teaching and learning experiences that transcend a traditional classroom’s walls. This is a historic opportunity to abandon antiquated teaching practices and reimagine instruction in ways that boost learning outcomes and prepare students for living and working in the digital age.

This book offers guidance for creating and sustaining rigorous and engaging blended learning solutions. Opening with lessons learned from the pandemic, the book addresses impacts on lesson design and delivery, student engagement, assessment, and teacher training and PD. The following chapters build on and address these experiences, with each chapter featuring strategies and examples of how to implement effective approaches to lesson design for blended and online instruction.

This book:

• Explores seven different blended learning models, with strategies and suggestions for implementing each one.
• Provides detailed guidance for planning a blended learning curriculum, from establishing a digital infrastructure to integrating students into a learning management system (LMS) to mapping a course scope and sequence.
• developing a pacing guide and creating effective blended and virtual lessons.
• Features downloadable templates, checklists and guided professional learning tasks in every chapter to help design virtual and blended lessons.
• Includes strategies for implementing authentic, student-led assessments.

The book is sure to meet the needs of varying practitioners who are eager to learn about designing successful blended learning courses and understanding what makes each course work.

Audience: K-12 teachers and instructional designers; faculty in higher education programs

Nathan D. Lang-Raad, Ed.D., (@drlangraadis) is an international speaker, author and professional learning facilitator, and the vice president of strategy at Savvas Learning (formerly Pearson). Prior to joining Savvas, he was chief education officer at WeVideo. He has served as a teacher, principal, university adjunct professor, consultant and education strategist in the course of his career. He was the director of elementary curriculum and instruction for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, and the education supervisor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Lang-Raad is also the co-founder of Bammy Award-nominated #LeadUpChat, an educational leadership professional learning network (PLN) on Twitter. He has also served as the president-elect of the ISTE Education Leaders PLN. In addition to The Boundless Classroom, Lang-Raad is the author of several books, including The Teachers of Oz: Leading with Wisdom, Heart, Courage, and Spirit with Herbie Raad.

James V. Witty, Ed.D., Esq., currently serves as executive director of schools within the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools district, leading and supporting high schools. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Tennessee and Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the Nashville School of Law. Witty is the author of Exemplary Practices in Alternative Education: Indicators of Quality Programming, published by the National Alternative Education Association. He has served students, teachers and families as a teacher, executive principal, adjunct professor, district leader and director for the Tennessee Department of Education. He’s also the founding executive principal of MNPS Virtual School, Tennessee’s first public virtual school. In 2019, Witty was recognized as Principal of the Year for his school district. In his current role, Witty is responsible for sustaining learning continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic by scaling remote, virtual and blended learning options for students.