Week 11: Distance Learning

What is harder than student teaching you ask? Student teaching from 249 miles away, to an online audience when the world looks like it is about to end...

How has Conrad Weiser adapted to schools closing?

With the state mandate to close all public schools for 2 weeks, Conrad Weiser has switched to an online learning platform. We are currently posting materials via Schoology for our students and they have 24 hours to log on and start working. We are taking attendance via the use of a discussion board and holding student accountable through grading assignments.

What does an online lesson look like?

At midnight everyday a new folder unlocks and my students have till 10 am the following day to go on and respond to a discussion board posting to be marked "here" for attendance. I use the discussion board either as a "bellwork" or as the place for students to provide their thoughts on something they read.

Over the past few days I have tried a few things such as students connect CDEs to the class content, a transgenic manipulation simulator and Nearpod. Nearpod seems to be the most successful at this time although there are some glitches at times.

My goal is to keep pushing out the new content while being mindful that the students are essentially now teaching themselves the content.

Ways to improve my online classroom

I normally teach for 80 minutes and have time to achieve 4-5 objectives. Moving online has shortened that to about 1-2 objectives posted a day. The students are now teaching themselves the material and it becomes harder to accomplish all the content we would get done as a class in the virtual environment.

I want to try to incorporate different online sources such as Pear Deck, virtual field trips and FlipGrid to make it more interactive for students to want to engage in the content. I think providing an article/video with a "game" to help reenforce the material is a good way to  sure I am limiting how much content I am putting out but, helping make sure the content gets chunked and started to be place into the long term memory.

Collaborate with other educators. It is important to remember none of us are alone and we all have similar struggles. Using social media, webinars and other resources online to connect with other educators at this time is essential to help better prepare myself to teach online.It is a new and scary environment for all of us but, as a profession will navigate through it.