The title of this post may be confusing to some people. This fall we are being expected to start teaching our traditional students (albeit with a mask and as much social distancing our classrooms will allow) while also teaching those students that are currently at home. Those “at home” students might be there for a myriad of reasons, but we need to teach them no matter the cause. How do we do that without sleep deprivation? We need to alter our classroom setup just a little, and make sure the activities we do in class are mirrored on our LMS (in our case, Moodle.) If a school is 1:1, then staff can put must of their activities on the LMS, and save a little paper as well.
This class talks specifically about classroom setup using a document camera (or really any webcam) to make your class easy to record or stream. We look at 3 synchronous teaching tools (there are more) and how they can be used asynchronously as well. We also look at 3 asynchronous tools. And finally, we look at setting up our YouTube channel to make the videos universally accessible.
The idea is that no matter your subject and classroom, you provide the same quality instruction to online learners that those students in your classroom have come to expect. They get (almost) the same activities, supports, and outcomes. All with little extra work for you as a teacher. This does depend on the support, hardware, and capabilities of your local school setting. I will do a future segment on teaching online without local support, as I know this is a concern with many teachers.
Note: Synchronous teaching means the students are actively watching (and hopefully participating) as the instruction happens. It is preferred by many, but has it’s drawbacks. Not all families have enough devices for all students to use them at the same time. Not all families have the bandwidth to support synchronous learning. Some families have no bandwidth at all. Hence we also need to consider asynchronous learning. Asynchronous does not happen when we dictate. It happens whenever it can for the learner. Maybe the internet is via moms phone, and she works first shift. Maybe the family drives into the school designated hotspot area (or a local restaurant) and downloads the instruction and activities. We simply need to recognize the needs of all our learners.