10 Tips and habits for successful online schooling
The pandemic has not been easy. There are many, many challenges that families are facing and dealing with together. Many schools have gone to online learning in response to the coronavirus pandemic. That has created many new challenges for parents and teachers who are having to work from home.
Whether teaching summer school remotely or teaching next school year remotely, in person, or in a hybrid model, teachers can continue supporting students through these crises.
What can teachers do?
No matter the setting — virtual or in-person, during summer break, or while teaching summer school — here are 10 ways that teachers can develop habits and continue successfully support their students through COVID-19:
1. SIMPLICITY
One of the challenges of distance learning is that you and your students are no longer in the same room to collectively tackle misconceptions. Instead, the large bulk of learning time is inevitably going to be driven by tasks that require a high level of self-direction.
As a result, simplicity is the key. It is critical to design distance learning experiences that have very clear instructions and utilize only one or two resources. It’s also best, when possible, to provide resources like readings as PDFs that students can always access.
Keep in mind: Tasks with few instructions often lead to the greatest amount of higher-order thinking, as students figure out what to do within defined parameters!
2. LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Working on assignments from a slouched position and streaming Netflix at the same time is not ideal if you aim to be productive. Many specialists in online teaching and learning, recommend that students choose an area in their homes that’s free from common distractions.
So, ask them to establish a productive learning environment!
3. VIRTUAL INTERACTIONS
Studying with a group of peers in the library or simply receiving on-the-spot clarifications from classmates is obviously not possible during this time. However, forming virtual interactions through platforms such as GroupMe, Microsoft Teams or Airmeet is a feasible action you could take in order to maintain that sense of collaboration and community.
4. GET STUDENT FEEDBACK — AND RESPOND TO IT
Your online teaching presence won’t arrive fully formed — it’ll be a work in progress. If you want to improve your online teaching presence, you should communicate to students that their opinions matter. After surveying the literature, here are six questions we recommend that you ask your students:
- On a scale from 1 to 5, how comfortable do you feel using technology in our virtual classroom?
- Have you encountered any technical issues, such as not being able to hear me, or not being able to connect to the internet?
- Are my lessons well-organized and my assignments clear?
- Can you easily find what you need?
- Do you feel like your voice is heard?
- What can I do to improve our online classroom?
5. IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT SCREENS
It’s easy for students to spend a lot of time in front of screens for their online school. As much as possible, successful teachers are assigning students tasks that get them up and moving and away from their devices. They’ve also been working out ways to have students continue to create art without screens. Here are some tips:
Videos: Students can write and perform plays, or create and cook recipes and conduct interviews, and submit these assignments through video.
Workbooks and drawing: Continue using workbooks and paper-based tasks instead of laptops to reduce students’ screen time. Ask students to complete some assignments on paper, take a picture of their completed work, and upload the photo to submit the task. Similarly, you can use this tip in art classes to have students work on drawing, then take pictures of their work to submit it to their teacher and share with the class.
6. TEACHER OFFICE HOURS
In addition to asynchronous and live classes, teachers all can have daily three-hour office hours shifts. They can log into Moodle, for example, for the duration and are visible as “online” for any student visiting the page. This will enable students to contact a teacher for help as they’re doing their schoolwork, and it helps our teachers maintain regular schedules.
This resource is comforting to both students and parents as a way to maintain instant communication with the school and teachers in real-time. It’s also a way for everyone to feel a little less isolated.
7. EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Across a multitude of situations, students may respond to the crises that they have experienced by showing abrupt changes in personal hygiene, sleep routines, weight, school performance, mood, disruptive behavior, and/or participation in activities. We’ve collected some “Dos & Don’ts” for you from experienced teachers:
- Show caring by noticing changes in behavior. For example: “You don’t seem like yourself lately. Is there something going on?” Invite students to connect via email, by calling their parents, or by mailing a note to their homes with a self-addressed stamped envelope for them to write you back.
- Don’t push for information or ask pointed questions.
- Lend an ear. Give a casual invitation like, “Let’s talk.”
- Do not ignore concerns or minimize what has happened.
- Let students know you are one of the adults here to keep them safe.
- Don’t tell children everything will be fine or the same.
- Do more listening than talking.
- Don’t dominate the conversation.
- Provide opportunities for students to express their feelings. Invite them to write or draw about their experiences and feelings.
- Do not recount explicit traumatizing details of the events.
- Keep to routines as much as possible.
- Avoid giving surprise assignments or making last-minute schedule changes.
8. INVOLVE FAMILIES
Between having to find childcare and supervise squirmy young learners, remote learning can be a very stressful experience for parents. Proactively and regularly communicate with them in mediums and languages that you know they’ll actively check and understand. Give them clear directions and resources. Solicit, listen to, and act on their feedback.
And, as you would with regular school, make sure to reach out to parents with news of great work their children did. Specific work-related praise goes a long way to strengthening relationships with both families and students.
9. FIND TIME FOR YOURSELF AND REFLECT
You are learning how to use online learning platforms and online tools as a teacher just as your students are learning how to use them as learners. Schedule time for yourself to reflect on how the experience is going for you and for your students — but remember my first point: You’re not expected to be perfect. Ask yourself questions like:
- What trends do I see in student participation and what are the possible causes?
- What am I learning about my students as participants of my virtual classroom?
- What could I do to make learning more accessible, inclusive, and meaningful?
- How are we, as a class, doing physically, mentally, and emotionally?
10. TECH SUPPORT
Tech support is vital to your remote learning being successful. Decide as soon as possible who will be responsible for what types of IT support, and how they will be reachable by students, families, and staff. Make sure all of your stakeholders know how to reach out for support.
Give teachers, students, and families video and written instructions on how to use your platform so they can answer some of their own questions before reaching out for help.
We have collected a list of various apps we’ve found helpful for online schooling:
Collaborating: Microsoft OneDrive. Like Google Drive, this platform lets us share documents among staff and send students links to documents and folders.
Another interesting collaboration tool is SO Viewer. It lets you connect to another computer, watch its screen in real-time, take full control as though sitting in front of it and share files directly and safely.
Readings: Storybird aims to promote writing and reading skills in students through storytelling. In this tool, teachers can create interactive and artistic books online through a simple and easy to use interface.
Multimedia tools: Projeqt is a tool that allows you to create multimedia presentations, with dynamic slides in which you can embed interactive maps, links, online quizzes, Twitter timelines, and videos, among other options.
Thinglink allows educators to create interactive images with music, sounds, texts, and photographs. These can be shared on other websites or on social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.
Animoto is a digital tool that allows you to create high-quality videos in a short time and from any mobile device, inspiring students and helping improve academic lessons.
Videoconferencing: Airmeet and Zoom has its own video conferencing platform. They are very convenient to have live classes with students — and it is now free for schools.
File-Sharing: Besides Dropbox, there are some other easy and secure tools like SO Viewer. It allows you to transfer images, video’s and very big files directly from PC to PC without using a cloud or other third party. That’s why it’s safer. And it’s free.
Gamification in education: Kahoot! is an educational platform that is based on games and questions. Through this tool, teachers can create questionnaires, discussions, or surveys that complement academic lessons.
ClassDojo is a tool to improve student behavior: teachers provide their students with instant feedback so that good disposition in class is ‘rewarded’ with points and students have a more receptive attitude towards the learning process.
Another interesting list with online education tools is prepared by Adobe Spark
We hope you’ll find it useful!
During this time of great uncertainty, we are working hard to develop and share our remote control software to support you. Our startup is focusing on the challenge that many educators now face of teaching their pupils whilst schools and colleges are closed and learning is happening remotely. All of the support we offer is free to access, so it can be used by teachers and shared with families — please pass it on.
