Welcome to a new episode of Tech Tuesday!
Today, I’m focusing on what to do for back to school with remote learning, providing tips for setting up instruction with your LMS, and tools to make it all easier! I use Canvas, so examples will be shown using this learning management system but should be easily transferable to any other LMS. Let’s jump in!
BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
My first tip above all is to build relationships with your students. Ever since my school district received training in Capturing Kids’ Hearts, I’ve been very aware of how important it is to get to know your students; what their passions are, where they want to go, and how they want to learn. Remote learning isn’t going to make this easy to do, but it can be done.
Usually, we’ve emphasized taking the first week of school to build these key relationships and then jump into content, but your students are going to be anxious about learning online, meeting you for very possibly the first time, and so excited to see their classmates and friends! So it’s important to REALLY make sure that you dedicate time to make your students comfortable in their new learning environment, which will probably take longer than a week. As you make the transition towards academic time, structure in time to continue building relationships with your students.
You can do this by doing daily or weekly check-ins. Pear Deck does this automatically when students sign into a presentation asking how they’re feeling today. You can see their answers in the teacher dashboard. Or create a Google Form with some basic questions, “how do you feel today?” or What about yesterday’s lesson do you still have questions about?” or “Is there something I can help you with today?”.
If you’re meeting with students via an online conference, at some point during this time, give 5 to 10 minutes for students to just chat with each other. No academic talk, just kids being kids (or teenagers). I saw that in the spring, some teachers were doing lunchtime conferences and just letting students chat with each other and their teacher while eating lunch and they were very popular!
BE CLEAR AND CONCISE
The hardest part about teaching remotely is that you are not in the classroom with your students. The strategies that work inside of four walls, do not necessarily translate to the Internet. In your classroom, you can physically see who is having a hard time with a concept and walk over to help or conduct a quick formative assessment to see what areas need re-teaching. In this new learning environment…not so much.
You will have to be very clear in your directions and concise and as my teacher friend, Sam would say model, model, model!!
Since your direct instruction or lecture time will most likely be in the form of a video, use the screen recording feature of your favorite app, be it WeVideo or Screencastify, to walk students step-by-step through assignments and show them exactly what you intend for them to do. Then type the directions again into your assignment. Just as you would repeat concepts and ideas in the classroom to allow students to hear and see the ideas over and over, the same idea applies here.
So, if I’m using Canvas to communicate with students, I may have a paragraph about a new concept in the announcements, doing some pre-teaching to get students set up for that day’s teaching. Then I’ll set up my module. First, I’ll create a page with an agenda or perhaps a checklist to help guide students in making sure they know what tasks need to be completed. Also on this page, I would embed my instructional video, whether it be from YouTube or EdPuzzle. Then add a link to the assignment.
Notice how I’ve used headings to break up this page and put information into sections; acting as a transition and guiding students through each step.
You can also add images, selfies or a Bitmoji of yourself, so students see you and feel like they’re connecting with you. Screenshots with arrows and text or animated gifs showing what steps to take will work with your ELL students as it will help show more of the meaning, especially with new vocabulary.
On the assignment page, I will reference the key things from my instructional video that I want students to remember and give directions for how to complete the assignment AND turn it in. Remember, you will not be in a classroom for a 90-minute block of time to answer questions, so these directions need to be very clear. Also, make sure to add due dates to assignments so that it appears on the calendar for you, students, and parents to see.
One more thing to remember, Canvas is not a warehouse for your content, it’s a learning delivery system for your students, so think about the assignment from your students’ point of view. Would these instructions be clear to you, if you were seeing this material for the very first time? Think about the potential questions and issues that may arise while your students are working and build in supporting resources to scaffold your modules. You can also use the “student view” feature on your course home page and view your assignments and modules literally the same way your students will.
To finish out the module, have a final place for students to reflect on the assignment. This could be a discussion board, a Flipgrid, or a Google Form, anything that allows students to think about the work they put in, what they learned, what they would change if they did it again, and if the assignment worked. This will give you key information going forward on what to adapt for future assignments.
And finally, one more thing you could add is in between your instructional video and the assignment, create a discussion asking questions about the instructional video to further develop these ideas.
INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS
When filming an instructional video, here are my recommendations:
First, studies show students engage more when they can see their teacher. So please, please, use your web camera! If you are able to use a program such as WeVideo, Screencastify, or Screencast-o-matic, use both the record the screen and web camera options. I know, it’s hard at first! Getting on camera is something that I never thought I would do, but here I am! Your students will benefit from seeing and hearing you!
Second, be able to model what you are talking about by having physical manipulatives or have some kind of graphics or slide deck available. This will benefit your visual learners and ELLs, if not everyone in the class. If you’re looking for more engaging templates beyond what Google Slides or PowerPoint has available, I would recommend using templates from Pear Deck, Slides Carnival, or SlidesMania.
One more important thing to remember with online learning is that you want your videos to be no longer than 10 minutes, again with concise, clear explanations and instructions. Again, studies show chunking material into smaller sections leads to deeper learning, engagement, and understanding.
Once you’ve completed your video, you need to share it out with students. I highly suggest uploading your videos to YouTube for a number of reasons. Number one, your students use it! They watch videos on YouTube all the time, so go where your students are! Number two, you can create playlists, a literal list of videos that can include ones you’ve created and ones from other people on a single topic. Make as many playlists as you like, they can be per topic or unit, or structured any way you wish! Number three, YouTube videos and playlists can be embedded into all the major learning management systems. So you can package your video right into your modules. Finally, number four, you can add captions to your videos, which is important for accessibility. Check out this tip for how to add captions.
Now, I also recommend using EdPuzzle as you can add either your YouTube video or any YouTube video, add your own voiceovers, guiding questions that can be placed anywhere within the video, view student progress, and make the video more interactive for students.
LIVE CONFERENCING
Live conferences with students can be used for office hours, Q and A time, and lunchtime meetups. It can also be used to provide direct instruction, but I urge you to record the session if you are doing this so students who can’t be “live” in the moment, can still view the recording, as well as having it be available for students who may need to watch it again. Whichever tool you use, be it Big Blue Button in Canvas or Google Meet, make sure it has been approved by your district to use as a communication tool with students.
Now while you’re in the conference, let’s make things a little easier. Did you know Google Slides has closed captioning capabilities? Present your slide deck, and then click on “CC” in the bottom toolbar and everything you say will be captured and displayed for students to view. Click the arrow next to the “CC” button to change the location of the closed captioning and the size of the text.
And did you know there’s also a Q & A feature? In the same toolbar, click on Q & A. A new window will open with the presenter view. On the right side, you’ll see Presenter Q & A. The first time you open this, you will only see “start new”. Start a new session and then you’ll see that the presentation is open to start accepting questions. Direct students to the link shown, which appears at both the top of your window and on the slide deck presentation for students.
At this link, students will be able to ask questions while you present. Once a student has asked a question, others can vote on the questions they would most like to see answered. Back on the presenter side, you can see the questions and click “present” to show the question you are answering to everyone viewing the presentation and then click the “present” button again to stop presenting.
If students get unruly, you can simply stop accepting questions and have a class discussion with students about digital citizenship and proper classroom behavior. Then give students a chance to redeem themselves and see if you can accept questions again.
One other tool you can use while in an online conference is Pear Deck. This will help make things interactive for students and allow them to be part of the learning, answering questions, and showing their understanding. By opening up the teacher dashboard, you can view student responses. You can also give students independent practice by using student-paced mode. This allows students to go through the slides at their own pace. Present your slide deck using the Pear Deck add-on. At this point you’ll see two options.
You could just have students do an activity on their own. So choose this first option and leave the activity on until the assignment is due. You can always go into the teacher dashboard on Peardeck.com and end the activity.
You can also start an instructor led presentation and then turn on student paced mode later. Click the three dots and select student paced. Click on stop, when you’re ready to end it.
BUILD STUDENT CHOICE INTO ASSIGNMENTS
While it may take more time and creativity on our part as teachers, our students will benefit from having assignments that offer choices and differentiate to their own personal learning styles. By looking at the objectives or state standards, understand what the end goal is that students need to be able to do and then work allow for different ways for students to show their learning.
In a recent podcast episode of Cult of Pedagogy, I liked this example: students were to complete a comic strip, but they could decide if they wanted to do it on the computer, or paper and then later take a photo, paint it…however they feel comfortable creating the comic. Give options for no tech, low tech, or high tech assignments too. But this is just one possibility.
Another is to have students decide which two of four options they are going to complete. The assignment is the same for everyone, they just show their learning in different ways. As students will become creators of content, rather than consumers, consider extending due dates and allow students to take several days to complete assignments.
ASSESSMENTS
I know when it comes to assessments, I’m going to receive questions about quizzes and how to keep students from cheating. The easiest answer is, you don’t. However, you can make it harder to cheat by asking questions that aren’t easily found by doing a Google Search. Have students compare two bodies of work, draw or create a 3D model, or work in a group to create a product. The assessment could also be an online portfolio where students submit their best work from the unit or semester to show what they have learned.
There are so many ways to assess students that aren’t a quiz or a test. I don’t know what other states are doing, but luckily in Virginia, we can take more of a risk trying new things, because we won’t have to worry about state accreditation this year.
When it comes to assessments, the one thing you want to make sure of is to have clear expectations of what the assessment will be like, especially for ELL and SPED students.
CREATE A SPACE FOR QUESTIONS
Even with all the planning and support scaffolding you could build into your online course, there are still things that won’t be clear or will be so new to students they may not understand it. So we need to provide a space where these questions can be answered not only by us the teacher, but by other students too.
I encourage you to have an online conference with students and discuss what this space could look like and how students will interact with one another; creating a safe environment for students to ask questions and receive answers.
Your class space maybe a discussion board in Canvas simply labeled Course Help or Q and A and students add topics when they have a question and anyone with the answer can respond. Or it could be a Flipgrid, again named Help, where anyone can ask and respond. Or it might be a Google Doc that is share with the entire class. As long as everyone can access this space and feel safe to ask their questions, it will work.
OTHER RESOURCES
The ideas that I share in this episode come from a variety of resources as well as my own experiences, but if you would like other places to find more information, I recommend signing up for Ditch That Textbook’s Remote Learning 101 course or listening to podcasts from Shake Up Learning and Cult of Pedagogy. Google also has a new Teach from Home website to help teachers during this new normal. I would also follow Dr. Catlin Tucker and Emma B Pass on Twitter.
Before I close out today’s episode, the biggest piece of ok advice I can give comes from Catlin Tucker. See your LMS as your classroom. It’s the space where your students will go to connect with content, you, and their peers. (Add quote)
All of the resources mentioned in today’s episode will be available in the episode notes on Wakelet.
Thanks for joining me this week and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and the little notification bell, so you can get notifications of when I have new videos available. See you in two weeks for the next episode of Tech Tuesday!
Ms Priester EDU 