Remote Elementary and Secondary Teaching

It's been awhile so forgive me for the long post but I feel I have to write something in the age of Zoom and remote emergency teaching because I am hearing a lot of horror stories coming from parents about what has been sent home and how much screen time students at all grade levels are being asked to consume. About children crying, about parents crying and teachers too.

So let's all start by taking a deep breath. And then just read and breathe.

1) Online/remote emergency teaching is not going to mirror classroom teaching ever. So don't even think it will.

2) As a teacher, if you are relying on old lessons plans that you've used for years, stop. While the material might be solid the delivery method isn't. Forget worksheets, fill in the blank and colouring sheets.

3) How long are you expecting your students from Grade K-12 to be online? Here is a visual guide for the amount of screen time students should be consuming from all media. And you are now, as a teacher using online teaching, part of the time usage for consumed media. So don't expect to lecture for three hours to students and expect them to absorb this information. It's not going to happen.

4) Students are on lockdown. They are worried and they are scared. Their parents are worried and they are scared. And you are worried and scared. Remember everybody's emotional and mental health in this time.

So what are you going to do to deliver the curriculum?

1) Remember nested units? These are your friend. A little more complicated to deliver but much easier to have students work at from home. My advice? Nest art or ICT curriculum into every activity. Most students will find it easier to complete this way. Why art? Art actually has a huge amount of procedure and technique involved in developing competence. ICT curriculum is the same. And what is easiest to teach online? Procedure based tasks. So hang all work off of procedural based tasks. Remember when a student creates a video or audio recording of an assignment this requires creative thinking, problem solving and the understanding of procedure on their part.

2) If you are going to teach online create no more than 5 minutes of video of what you want students to learn. Show an actual example and walk your students through the procedure/task/concept you want them to master. Use lots of pictures, examples and diagrams. Send up a follow up email with all of the tasks you want then to do listed so if they didn't understand the visual /audio cues in the video, they have it in text form. If this is high school coordinate with your fellow teachers as to when an assignment is due so as not to overload anyone. Why do this rather than face to face through Zoom? Online meeting are exhausting both physically and mentally for both you and your students. By creating online videos and or PDFs this allows students and parents to make the decision on what time is right for them to do classroom work according to their schedule. And it means the student can review the video or text over and over again.

3) Use the time you were supposed to be teaching in a classroom to make one on one connections with your students and parents. Where are they having problems? Is there anything you can clarify? Be available by email, Skype or Google Hangout. Zoom unfortunately has privacy issues. Make a weekly or bi-weekly calendar and have parents and older students sign up for a 5 to 10 minute chat. Make sure you contact every student if only just to check in and maintain the bonds you have already forged.

4) Be creative. But there are lots of teacher created videos and material on the web. Not everything has to be created by you. You need to be kind to yourself too.

5) Take advantage of online supports that already exist. For instance, the National Writing Project in the USA is celebrating National Poetry Month in April.  The poetry prompts start April 6th. In Canada, Indigenous Arts and Stories provides resources for teachers at all grade levels. There are tons of great resources just waiting for you.

6) Use this time to master a few online tools that will make your life easier. Where I learned a lot of the tools I currently use now was here and here. Seven years later I am still using many of the tools that were taught in these two courses and I am still in communication with many of these brilliant people. When you look at the list of who put these courses together some of the best educational thinkers today were way ahead of the curve. It wasn't just mastering the technology, but showing how to incorporate it into my practice that was so useful. It's okay to try and fail with this stuff, because it is how we all learn.

7) Embrace the online design experience. To teach online content you need to be very clear in your own mind about what the outcome is to be. What do you want the students to learn? Good online design means thinking about what you want to achieve first, then how are you going to measure that achievement and then creating the content that will get students to the place they need to be. It will actually improve your face to face classroom teaching when you get back.

And if your stuck? Don't know what to do or how to do it? Sign up on Twitter. And then post a tweet to someone in the #etmooc #clmooc world. A Great Teacher will get back to you soonest and help. I know. I reach out to them all the time.

Be safe and stay at home. 

Infinite Monkeys: Part II

So yesterday I was writing about creating an app (short for software application) for teachers using MS Paint for Grade 1. I'm still working on it and since Kevin asked for a debrief on the software I thought I'd write another post on the process of building this app.

So far, there have been two areas of concern for me. The first has nothing to do with the software, but with the surprising lack of good lesson plans for MS Paint at Grade 1 that are on the web. Honestly, I feel we should have a mooc just to create quality technologically based lesson plans for other teachers.  Lots of teacher websites saying that MS Paint will help improve fine motor control and using the software is part of their technology plan but nothing that actually guides/informs other teachers about how you can accomplish that using Paint. (And what happens if you're in a district that can't afford a technology specialist?) So other than the ICT curriculum documents saying "Thou shalt use Paint!" if you're not comfortable using technology where are the resources?

Now onto the app building program Infinite Monkeys. It is easy to use, if you know how to attach RSS feeds from your various websites. I eventually found the solution to solve my YouTube RSS problem. You need to create your own channel with a distinct user name. This means you have to disconnect your Google+ account from your YouTube account and create a user name for your channel. It is that user name by itself (nothing else- no http, no www, etc.) that hooks your channel to the app builder when using Infinite Monkeys. The down side of it is that when you hook your channel to the app, it is only going to show the videos you've created not the playlists you've compiled. So all that work to attach my channel and none of it has anything to do with teaching MS Paint skills.

The other aspect of Infinite Monkeys I find frustrating is how quickly it becomes unresponsive. While I'm searching for solutions to various problems like locating an RSS feed the platform shuts down and you have to log back in. Not that this is difficult, just a click of a button, but when you are attempting to fine tune and see exactly what each link displays this can be a real time waster.

Finally, lets talk about the different links you can attach. You can only attach 9 elements and you get to choose from a variety of different links- Twitter, YouTube, your blog, documents, websites, etc. so there is a wide range of options. If you were to use this for self promotion for example, this is a great tool. If you have lesson plans already created with documents, forms, videos, a specific website, etc that can be downloaded, it is also amazing. But if you're trying to create a compilation of other work that is out on the web (because do you really wish to reinvent the wheel every time?) this is a difficult platform to use.

So if I was going to do this again ( and I might- I now have my own YouTube channel!) I would structure the process differently. Much like creating any unit plan, I would have to decide what specifically the app would teach, design the assets separately and use the app to compile all the links as a whole. A lot of creating/making to do to make a truly worthy app.

On reflection, to make a solid MS Paint unit, I would need to create a video for students and a video for teachers. My choices are limited right now to my channel on YouTube (no Animoto, GoAnimate or PopcornMaker for instance, unless I found a way to link directly to what I have created using those platforms), my blog, the creation of a Word document where I could compile all the links, a web link to a curriculum document (but which province or state?), probably a Thimble page on the topic and perhaps my Twitter account if it was relevant.

However, you can just build a website using Thimble or Weebly to compile all the necessary elements that already exist and spend your energy creating good quality lesson plans. It may be the easier route for creating, displaying and managing content.