Remote Teaching
Help #flattenthecurve by restructuring how you’re thinking about your class over the next few weeks.
Are you teaching right now? Not sure how to create a remote class, or turn a live classroom session you had already planned into something more “flipped classroom”? Feel like your classroom has been flipped, like it or not?
CodePath.org has been teaching remotely for a few years now, and we’ve learned a lot! Let’s talk about what you can do right now to keep your students engaged with the material in fun, interactive ways. The good news is you get to be creative. The great news is you’re about to develop skills that will propel you into the future. The best news is that you’re about to turbo-charge your ratio by deconstructing the classroom and using community resources to re-imagine learning. Let’s get started.
Edit: If you would like to come to a live version of this training, I will be hosting one Saturday, April 4th at 1PM Pacific and it will feature a 1-hour training, as well as 2 unconference breakout room sessions so you can connect with other educators. Sign up and view past trainings and evolving resource links here.
Quick Flips
First of all, if you’re caught flat-footed: your lesson plans can still work. Your lesson plans still have Goals and those goals can still be met. First identify those- this is how we’ll quickly flip your classroom.
What do you need the students to be able to do by the end of the unit?
What progressive steps do they need to do to show they can meet the learning goals of what you’re teaching next?
With those in hand…
Deconstruct the Classroom
What were you going to lecture about?
If you have slides, lecture notes, or other material you had prepared to perform a presentation, the good news is you have most of the assets you need to create a video. Most videos can be captured at 80% (good enough) quality in just 1 or 2 takes. Try giving your presentation to a screen recorder with a decent microphone. Watch it, then give it again. Put out the second or third video you produce and it’ll have advantages over your lectures — students can pause, rewind, and replay the lecture again and again.
Need students to answer writing prompts or solve math problems on paper?
Use Google Forms- they even have a quiz feature with automatic scoring. There are other platforms like No Red Ink or even just Google Docs that students can write longer-form essays in. These platforms help train writers to use modern technology while building writing skills.
Need to track submissions?
There are a million platforms for tracking learning, such as Google Classroom or just Google Sheets. Coda.io allows for even more simple tracking, especially great for multi-stage projects. Of course your school likely uses something like Canvas, which can help you define deadlines for assignments and assign them to groups of students. Get to know these features, which can help improve submission rates by sending students automatic reminders, and keeping track of their to-do lists for them.
Need students to follow along as you show them how to do something on the computer?
Screencast it with your face as you explain how to do it using Loom. Film it a few times. Try not to point the webcam up your nose. Turn the webcam view off if you don’t feel comfortable putting your face on a video.
You might be able to find pre-created online resources and lessons that students can already do that are tracked and well understood in terms of their efficacy.
Need to get students discussing, designing, architecting, or working in groups? Try…
Small-Group Sessions with Zoom
Zoom.us, a video meeting provider, has excellent features for people who teach remotely. I don’t work for them or get paid by them, I’m mostly recommending them because they’ve allowed teachers to use them for free as a response, and I know free is the right price for students and teachers.
Zoom has a feature called Breakout Rooms:
These allow you to break a large session of any number of students into small group sections of any size. You can use automatic grouping for short-term turn-and-talks or on-the-fly pairing. You can manually assign students into groups for in-class durable group assignments, for when students are getting into stable groups that will likely last for awhile. If you have stable groups, you can create a CSV or google spreadsheet and import that spreadsheet each time to automatically put students into breakout rooms. This allows students to be placed into a private room away from the other students with only the group that you specify, giving them the freedom to talk out a problem, collaborate on a project, have a discussion, and make mistakes in a smaller group environment. This is the key feature I have found that gets students talking and engaging over the internet- a small enough group environment to create psychological safety.
Large-Group sessions with Zoom
Traditional classrooms lessons, with group participation, are more scalable over Zoom. This may mean that you can take multiple sections of the same class who are at the same level, and do a presentation with all of them at once. This saves time and allows for more one-on-one conversations with students.
One-on-ones, and one-on-fives with Zoom
Given that all class time doesn’t need to be taken up by presentations and lectures, you’re freed up to target specific students or groups of students in the same performance bucket.
One-on-ones
One-on-ones can help you to dig deeper into their understanding and help them unlock their enthusiasm for the subject by making a personal connection between the learning goals and their own lives. Only through talking with a student and having a chance to know them can we really help improve the curriculum by creating personal context for our students.
One-on-fives
Short, small-group chats are far more personal ways for students to engage with instructors. Given a flexible schedule, students can interact with lectures or recorded videos at their leisure, and can show up to short sessions prepared to engage deeply with just a few classmates. They can discuss trouble or struggles they may be having with the curriculum and individualized intervention can cross-apply to students who share those struggles. A few interviews a week can give you a sample of a cross-class problem and help you to issue course corrections to iteratively improve the student experience.
Office Hours
A paid (or free education account) can host long, open video calls at a stable link, allowing students who are struggling to drop in and ask questions while you’re in the comfort of your own home. If you’re trying to catch up grading papers, open a link and let students know via a messaging application- increasing personal teacher availability and helping you create more just-in-time help.
Engaged Students
Keeping students engaged instead of allowing them to slip into the “infotainment” mental space they get into when watching videos is critical if you want to run a live classroom session. Otherwise, it’s better as a simple video recording!
Ask yourself before calling a live meeting- do you need to keep students engaged, or can they watch this as a video, pausing and rewinding as needed? If students are only asked to attend something live when it will be an active session, they’re more likely to engage during those sessions. Use a video if you can, which allows students to reserve their social energy for engaging with other people, rather than content.
If your lesson depends on student interaction, progressively introduce interaction into the lesson. Start with the zoom controls- go over them once in the beginning by asking everyone to locate and raise their hands.
Some engagement techniques:
- Asking students to raise their hands to agree or disagree with an idea or as a pop-quiz session helps you keep track of how many students are still engaged in a live session, and are ready to participate in breakout rooms.
- Ask students to perform a small example of the learning goal- come up with a prompt, write a sentence summarizing some key concept. Ask them to spend an exact number of minutes writing or formulating questions, then share them in the chat. For example- spend the next 3 minutes googling and examining as many examples of impressionist painters as you can, and then share them in the zoom chat. This is a quick pulse you can take to check understanding live during the session, and provide students with opportunities to practice in a time-boxed way.
- Breakout rooms get students talking to each other- send them off with a research question to answer, a discussion to conclude, or problem to solve. Give teams measurable goals so you can keep students critically thinking and socially engaged.
Engaged Communities
If your students are home when they might not otherwise be, provide excuses to engage with a community by scheduling more informal interactions with the material. Streaming video “watch parties” can help students watch videos together and discuss the material in chat. There are several video platforms that provide group watching- even getting students together to watch movies can provide emotional and social comfort.
Right now, simply creating community during a frightening time in our nation’s history is an accomplishment. Not allowing distance to turn into disconnection is paramount- let’s use all the tools we’ve created for ourselves to help stay connected and stay safe.
