Remote Learning Challenges and solutions
Remote Learning, Distance learning, Blended Learning are all buzz words being thrown about right now. With so many schools closing and so many courses being thrown online it is becoming more and more clear that we should have been farther along with elearning than we truly are. No one could have predicted the massive school closures which have occured, but we all are very well aware that we have between 1 and 10 students absent each and every day of school. The question I asked early on was “What can I do for these students who have lost a day's worth of instructions?” To combat these absences I made sure I recorded all my lessons with YouTube live. I took this recording and I put it in Edpuzzle to make sure the lesson is stopped and the most important ideas and a question is asked. I presented all my slide decks in Nearpod so I could have available the student paced slide deck with questions embedded for those who were not there in person. I made sure each student knew to check Google classroom everyday if they were absent so they would not miss a thing and finally I created a 24/7 office hour Flipgrid so students could ask me questions regardless of time or place. This type of blended learning and allowing the technology to archive information for students to later participate helped me prepare for this situation. Hopefully more and more teachers will begin to use technology on a daily basis so in the case of rolling class closures we will be a bit more prepared. But for now, here are a few solutions to problems many are sure to encounter in a remote learning environment.
Remote learning comes with many challenges. Teachers will need to have a routine to assign work, assess student learning and maintain classroom collaboration though the remote learning time frame. Students will need to be able to easily access assignments, collaborate with fellow students, and be able to reach their instructor whenever they have a question. Luckily there is technology available today which can help to overcome these challenges and make remote learning a success. Along with the technology teachers will need tools to hold students accountable for assigned work, encourage collaboration between students and the teacher, and keep learning personable by utilizing live webcam streams.Finally teacher will need to be available to be able to create an air of normalcy and to connect the class back into the community structure they had in class. If deployed successfully, students will not miss a beat of instruction during this remote learning timeframe.
One of the most difficult tasks in a remote learning setting is keeping students accountable and on task with daily activities. In order to maintain class standards and organization instructors must consistently assign and collect student work in one Learning Management System (LMS). Whether you are using Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Canvas or another LMS, teachers must consistently check on assignment progress and completion. Teachers must utilize their LMS to communicate with students who are falling behind, not checking in, or not completing work to the best of their ability. Keeping an open communication channel is always important as well to ensure students can ask the instructor questions on assignments. While the communication channels in your LMS may meet this need, Utilizing the free application Flipgrd can enhance this communication by putting students in face to face contact with their instructors and fellow students in a nonlinear time frame. Flipgrid is also a great place for non-course communications and to allow students to see each other while they are home learning. It is very important for student to keep this connection with the class and their instructor.
Assessments can also pose a problem in a remote learning environment, but luckily there are many educational technology tools available to assist with both formative and summative assessments. Both Microsoft and Google have Forms which can be used to ask multiple types of assessment questions. These products both allow for the instructor to select an autograde option which allows teachers and students to automatically receive assessment results. There are many other tools available to allow for assessments of all types. Quizizz and Kahoot are great for formative assessments to check for understanding, but do so in a gamified fashion. Both allow student paced and/or homework options to allow students to take the assessment at different times. If you want to include the students in a distance quiz creation activity, try using the Kids Quiz creator hack I created for both Quizizz and Kahoot. In a matter of minutes the students can create and participate in a whole class created quizz. EdPuzzle is used as a great way to assess students on content related video questions and Edji helps to assess student reading comprehension for any readings in any format you have available. If you have students who need to model a mathematical equation or science concept, the use of an online whiteboard can be key. By using Microsoft Whiteboard or Google Jamboard students can ink their concept and then use Screencastify to record this thought process. Flipgrid even has a whiteboard function for quick checks for understanding. Rest assured, whatever the task, whatever the assessment there is a tool to help in your remote learning plan.
Lastly, one of the most difficult aspects of remote learning is conducting live classroom instruction. The difficulty lies in the fact that students may or may not show up to these live discussions and will result in many of the students not receiving the background information they will need to know to complete a task. Fortunately both Microsoft and Google have video casting and recording capabilities. In Microsoft teams and Google Hangout Meet the instructor can cast any screen to their students, have face to face conversations with the class, and record this event to be viewed later by those students who did not attend. These videos can be placed in your class LMS for easy review or turned into an Edpuzzle to help guide the students who did not attend the live sessions.The Live classroom instruction can be enhanced with the use of collaborative slide decks such as Peardeck and Nearpod. In these decks teachers can control the pace of a slide deck, check for understanding with multiple question types, and access student data anytime during or after the session has ended. If you use Peardeck through Google Slides and have the Peardeck power-up extension installed, you can enable closed captioning during the Peardeck. This is a very sneaky hack which you can see how to do here. These slide decks can also be handed out as student paced sessions so students who did not attend the live session can still complete the slide deck assessments. If you absolutely cannot have a live session and you can keep your lessons to under five minutes, you can always used screencastify to record yourself going over the lesson and upload the video into a Flipgrid topic. Here students at any time during the week can watch and then leave their thoughts on what was shares. A great way to include a lesson while not having to worry about students making it for a live sessions.
If you have been asked to jump into this elearning experiment without any training, I know the outlook is daunting. But let's remember that the tool is not what makes a great lesson, you are what makes a great lesson. We just have to take you in person lesson plan and insert tools which will help students collaborate, communicate and create online. We just need a singular place where a teacher can distribute materials and also receive materials. Now is not the time to go crazy trying out many new tools, but now is the time to learn the basics of the tools you have available to you. You know how to get kids to think. You know how to get kids to contribute. Now you just have to do it in a different medium. If you set out with a plan, this journey will be a little less rocky. Safe Teaching!
