Whew - first week of remote learning in the books. So much went right but it was because of these five tips. While this post will reference Google Classroom, I will add the equivalent in Microsoft Teams in case any information is something you would like to try.
Teaching 38 students in one remote class is not an easy task but using the technology to help us solve problems and empower learning was a big win. First problem, how to take attendance effectively.
Blended and Remote Learning Tip #1: Attendance and Music.
Even if we took attendance in Meet, it would be hard to be sure the “here” was coming from the right person, and Meet lists participants by their first name, and attendance rosters go by the last name. The whole process is a disaster waiting to happen, Enter Google Classroom Topics - a Topic called Today (where all activities we would do that class period were listed) and a scheduled question - called Attendance Question.
You could do any type of question but we chose a multiple choice question to get to know more about our students and their SEL. We scheduled it to appear the minute class started. We played music to pump the class up as we waited for all students to enter and then while the music played they answered the question. This took some reminding, but once they got it we could just call out those students' names that had not answered the question and confirm they were in fact not there. Then, we could watch for them to enter if they came late or more easily check participants during the class to see if they had joined.
Microsoft Teams...this would not be as easy. In Google Classroom we can click to see who has not answered and then call out just those names. You could certainly do in Forms in conjunction with Tabs, and you would have a lasting record of daily attendance, something we can’t do in GC.
Blended and Remote Learning Tip #2: Connecting with Students
To get to see all student faces - and start to learn their personalities and to gauge their tech abilities - we asked a “What Would You Rather” question on Flipgrid to start the first day. I did a brief tutorial on the new Flipgrid camera and let them explore it and leave responses. As is typical they did more than I could have asked for, showing off their creative abilities along with their innate tech savviness.
Tech Tips: We learned quickly that Flipgrid and Safari don’t work together, and that students need to turn off their meet camera to use the Flipgrid one. We also asked students to download Chrome or Edge.
Microsoft Teams: You could do this as an assignment or make this a Teams Tab and then remove from tabs when the assignment is over.
Student face blurred to respect privacy.
Blended and Remote Learning Tip #3: Hearing From All Students
We used Socrative.com and the short answer option when we wanted to take the temperature of the room on how much they remembered about Metaphors. Socrative allowed us to check for understanding from ALL students in under 5 minutes. We then used the VOTE feature to allow them to vote on the best response, so any students who didn’t quite remember saw the responses of their peers which helped either fill in any gaps or refresh their memory.
Tech Tip: you only need the Free version of this app and here is a video to get you started.
Microsoft Teams: Add Socrative to Teams Tab using the website option.
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Blended and Remote Learning Tip #4: Build Tech Fluency:
To get to know the students and help them gain success using the tech tools we plan to use often, the students did a Book Creator activity where they created pages about themselves using a template to scaffold the activity. They each got a page in a collaborative book and we had them record themselves explaining their page. They easily used this technology and there were virtually no problems with tech except some students forgot to click inside the book to access their page. This activity was low stakes to allow them the freedom to learn the app in a fun way.
Microsoft Teams: use Book Creator via the website option in Teams Tabs or make this an assignment with direction on how to get into Book Creator with the Class code.
For more on how to use Book Creator head to infused.link/online
Blended and Remote Learning Tip #5: Curating Resources for Success
I created a Wakelet Collection of any technology we used. It was filled with tutorials to help kids who might need to finish later and then forgot how to use the tool (which was probably none of them -but I wanted to have it there just in case - or if parents wanted to better understand the tool). For this first week, this included the two tools we used: Flipgrid and Book Creator. This Wakelet collection will grow as we use more technology. This was added to a Google ClassroomTopic called Resources. This way we don’t overcrowd Google Classroom with tutorials and instead put them into this ongoing collection that will grow with time and will hopefully be populated with student created tutorials.
Microsoft Teams: Make a Channel for Resources and add the Wakelet collection to that channel.
More about Wakelet in this video.
Special Thanks to Laurie Brady for allowing me to co-teach with her during this pandemic.
Bonus Blended and Remote Learning Tip
Check out The Chromebook Infused Classroom to learn more ideas like this and ideas for teaching with the new digital pedagogies.