COVID-19 has brought about many changes for us in the educational field. In a very short time, teachers were asked to completely change their instructional strategies and adapt their F2F classrooms to an online delivery format. Some teachers had little or no experience with online teaching or learning, and sadly — some were not given proper training to add to their stress.
Teaching several college courses as I do is certainly different than teaching many subjects in the day as in the K-12 system, but I hope some of my tips will translate to K-12 teachers, as well.
Here are some tips that might help you in your transition:
Make a Home Office
If you don’t already have space set aside for your Home Office; do that first. This might be a room, a desk, a closet, or an office-in-a-bag that will allow you mobility. If you will be going Live for your classes or recording videos, make sure your office is conducive to this or figure out how to accommodate it to reduce background noise and have a good backdrop and lighting. For example, I do most of my work in my “computer room” office where my desktop is located, but I do have the need to move as others in the house are home with classes or other activities. In what my daughter now considers as a bad choice, she decided that the walls of her bedroom should be lime green and blue. What luck I have now, because I have a “green room” that I can use as a backdrop for my videos. This allows me to display another graphic or video behind me while I am in the foreground of the video.
Gather your Tech Tools
What hardware and software tools do you have available to you? My most-used tools include: desktop computer, laptop computer, cell phone, Canvas LMS, Zoom www.zoom.us, WeVideo www.wevideo.com , Remind www.remind.com , Flipgrid www.flipgrid.com.
Decide Synchronous, Asynchronous, or a Combination
Synchronous means you are all meeting at the same time — think “Live.” My tool of choice is Zoom www.zoom.us. I can use that from my cell phone, desktop, or laptop computer. Students can join with the click of a link. Free 40-minute meetings for three or more people are available in their Basic Free Account. I find that students participate more using Zoom than they did in class. There is a chat feature, breakout rooms, screen-sharing, remote control, and session recording available. Asynchronous means that you are never really online at the same time. You leave things for students, usually in your Learning Management System (LMS), and they leave things for you: assignments, discussions, questions, emails. For your class, Asynchronous might mean recording lots of short explanation videos either in advance or on-demand. Synchronous is most like your current classroom. Asynchronous is the most flexible in time. I like to use a combination of the two in order to appeal to my students’ different learning styles.
Plan Your Week(s)
Convert any of your current lesson plans to adapt to your new online schedule. Right now, we are planning online learning of our F2F classes for the next three weeks, so I have planned out that far. Decide what to cover in each week, what synchronous meetings to have, and what assignments and activities out of those you assign in a F2F environment will directly aid in student learning.
Create a Workflow
Decide how prep time will include components for Online Learning. I create a video(s) on the topic of the day – usually using www.wevideo.com. I like WeVideo because it allows me to record shorter videos or screencasts and put them together in a timeline. I schedule an announcement to go out in my LMS and I also schedule a Remind message to go out with the link to the video(s). I schedule or directly send out a Remind message with the link for my Zoom synchronous meeting times. I send out emails at the end of each class to students who are not keeping up with the class. Remind also allows me to send direct text messages to individual students who are falling behind.
Set Ground Rules for your Family
Do Not Disturb! Create a system for letting family members know when you need silence because you are on a Zoom synchronous meeting. A big calendar of quiet times and places might be a good idea.
Maintain your Normal Class Schedule
I am available for my students “Live” to answer questions Live or via text or emails during our normally scheduled class times. This allows students to meet as a group with me at the beginning of class, and then still have me available to answer any questions as they encounter them during our regularly scheduled class period. I let them know my feedback policy. I see all notifications of my student on my phone and I am able to answer most questions from it. If I need to go to my computer, I will let them know that I will answer their question when I get back on my computer. Set feedback guidelines so that you are not overwhelmed with requests for help at all hours of the day and night.
Allow for a Place to Talk
Especially if you are doing a more asynchronous class; set up a place for students to talk, discuss, react, and vent. I use Flipgrid www.flipgrid.com for this. I keep the time limit to five minutes per video, and try to respond to all of those who post something. Sometimes it is class-related, but sometimes students just need to connect and process the changes that our self-quarantine are unveiling. I like that Flipgrid allows you to record a live video or upload a pre-recorded video.
Cut Yourself Some Slack
Unless you are a professional You-Tuber, your videos might not be as stellar as you would like. This is probably because you don’t have the experience, and perhaps the tools, needed to create studio-quality class videos. That’s OK! Your students will appreciate your efforts. As your students create videos for you, they also might experience how different it is recording themselves for others to view. You’ll get better and faster with each video.
I hope you will adapt all or some of these tips as you move into short-term or extended online teaching for your F2F classes. Feel free to leave comments or email me directly at lori@perceptivepetal.com.