Learning to Learn Remotely
This week: schools in the UK have closed. All of them.
Other news this week: I haven’t heard anyone say that that this spells the end of learning. We’re just having to rethink it.
“Students already hang out with their friends online; the most important thing now is for us to get teachers used to this.” Jonathan Rochelle, Zapier.
Educators across the world are doing what they do best and uniting to provide creative solutions that best facilitate remote learning and build an online community. The biggest challenge for all of us is facing up to the uncertainty. We are entering entirely uncharted territory. Or are we?
At London’s BETT exhibition in 2016, I was hugely fortunate to first meet Jonathan Rochelle, the co-founder of Google Docs. In 2019, he joined the team at Zapier as their CPO. Zapier is an amazing company doing amazing things. They are also 100% remote based.
In his post at Zapier, having worked in schools across the world with Google for Education and as a parent with children in school today, I was delighted that JR found the time to speak with me and to share his unique perspective.
Tweeting a list of key elements in taking schools online, I will expand on those here and hope other educators find them as useful as I have!
Trust
There’s an inherent trust that you have in your team members and that extends to the idea of working from home. If someone’s struggling to be productive working from home — they will tell you. It becomes less about keeping tabs on your team, but rather ensuring that the goals you set them are lofty enough.
Ambitious Learning Goals
In the same way that managers should set targets to inspire their team, educators should set ambitious learning goals for their students.
Hold students accountable to a higher standard of learning so that you fill up their time in an engaging way.
Increased Interactivity
An effort to raise levels of interactivity is something that JR feels is essential; it can’t just be a lecture. Anything even the slightest bit boring in person will become way worse on screen, students will likely become distracted and lose interest quickly. He recommends using education technology tools such as Pear Deck, Quizlet and Kahoot to achieve this.
Instant Feedback
Speed of feedback — in whatever work you do — is super helpful. We should leverage the fact that we’re online and embrace the things that are possible. As is the case at Zapier, there’s an opportunity online to get more interaction and from more students.
Check-ins
Create groups that meet daily for as little as 15 minutes to catch-up and encourage everyone to share what their goals are for the day. Simple questions like ‘how’s it going?’ and ‘what are you going to do to make your goals happen?’ make a real impact. There is a difference between checking in and checking up. Checking in wins.
One of many recommendations I really liked was JR’s suggestion to create online spaces/rooms of shared interest in which staff and students could meet together to interact about matters outside the curriculum. Examples suggested: cooking, making and tiktok (we share a passion for storytelling and videography).
Transparency and Intentional Writing
Intentional communication through writing is high on JR’s list of recommendations for any school taking their learning remotely. Both on creation and consumption side.
At Zapier, his team have Friday updates — everyone writes a Friday update — in which they talk about something learned, a top priority and something unplugged. It’s a great way to get to know each other better.
Getting into a ritual of writing is fantastic.
Come up with a model that works for your school and do it somewhere where people can find it — make it fully transparent. It would be an amazing thing to take on and do as a community in which everyone participates. A sentence or two to reflect each week would give staff and kids practice at being transparent and sharing in each other’s trials and tribulations
To close our conversation, JR shared the following:
I do think this will be a transition point for awareness and comfort but I have no worries about people being able to work or learn remotely. From this point forward, there’ll be way more investment and we will always have remote learning available. If you’re home because you have to be — no worries.
I think the movement was happening.
Inspired by those, like JR, that are able to operate remotely in a cloud based culture of innovation, I’ve considered what it would be like to base a school in the cloud for years. Here we are.
In the most challenging of circumstances, I am excited to see what happens. Teachers are a group of pretty amazing folk, after all.
A huge thank you to Jonathan Rochelle.
