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See all the wonderful things EdTechnologySpecialists Mallack has made

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How to Teach Remotely with Flipgrid Video - 14 min long but great way to understand and start

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What Teachers in China Have Learned in the Past Month

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What Teachers in China Have Learned in the Past Month

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An American whose classroom in Beijing is now online shares what she and her team have learned since the coronavirus hit, just as U.S. teachers make the same shift.

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An American whose classroom in Beijing is now online shares what she and her team have learned since the coronavirus hit, just as U.S. teachers make the same shift.

Since February 17, I've been teaching 11th-grade humanities writing to students who are self-quarantined in China. Our teachers were in the same position several weeks ago that U.S. teachers are in now-we were expecting to teach in classrooms in Beijing. Now we're teaching virtual classes remotely from our homes in China and countries around the world. We had about half a week to prepare for online school, including setting up a digital platform that none of us had ever used before.

For the first few weeks, we needed to be very flexible and patient. Everything we would have done in person took longer virtually as we learned to navigate online learning. But we've worked out many kinks and are now engaging our students in high-quality learning experiences online.

Since our students have stopped physically attending school, their Chinese classes happen in real time following the regular schedule, using a Chinese app. Our international team teaches using Moodle, an open-source learning platform that has the ability to do live video conferencing with digital whiteboards and break-out rooms. We also use it to give students feedback, do partner and group work, and publish class materials-things that can be done through Google Classroom as well.

Here is some of what we've learned so far about teaching students who must stay home. Start by continuing to use lessons that are clear and simple, and don't introduce new programs for teachers and students to learn if you can help it.

Asynchronous Teaching

Our international teachers are on four continents across eight time zones, so most of our classes are asynchronous, meaning our teachers post assignments and recorded lessons and students complete work at different times. Teachers respond using a rubric, comments, and sometimes recorded video or audio feedback through our online learning platform.

Most of our teachers have at least three live classes each week in addition to the asynchronous classes. This helps build community in the class, engages students, and makes the learning more interactive. Some teachers have found it more effective to teach live classes daily.

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, we're assigning students tasks that get them up and moving and away from their devices. We've also been working out ways to have students continue to create art without screens.

Videos: A first-grade class recently had a homework assignment where students needed to describe a pet. One boy's mother video recorded him while he used descriptive language to introduce the audience to his two cats. Students can also write and perform plays, or create and cook recipes and conduct interviews, and submit these assignments through video.

Workbooks and drawing: Many of our classes at school intentionally used workbooks and paper-based tasks instead of laptops to reduce students' screen time. We're continuing this by having students complete some assignments on paper, taking a picture of their completed work, and uploading the photo to submit the task. Similarly, our art classes are continuing to have students work on drawing, and they are taking pictures of their work to submit it to their teacher and share with the class.

Teacher Office Hours

In addition to asynchronous and live classes, our teachers all have daily three-hour office hour shifts. They log into Moodle for the duration and are visible as "online" for any student visiting the page. This enables 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.

Office hours are not for tech support. Early on, we clearly communicated to families how to reach our IT support staff for technical help. We remind families and students regularly-at first we did this daily-who to go to for what types of support. We also have our teachers' office hours schedules and IT contact information clearly posted on our online learning site.

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.

Many students don't have laptops at home, but in the U.S., most families have access to at least one smartphone that has internet. Fortunately, Google for Education and other online learning platforms typically have good user experiences for smartphones and tablets, in addition to computers.

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.

Teacher Support

At school, our team has weekly professional development sessions. We've continued this using our online platform every week with consistent start and end times. Agendas are developed with our instructional leadership team and distributed to teachers in advance. We split our time between continuing to work on our year-long focus of developing our unit plans, modeling how to use our online platform, and answering questions teachers have in real time.

In addition to professional development and regular communication, we teachers are working on maintaining our sense of community. We celebrate birthdays and share photos and videos of where we are in the world. There's even talk of doing virtual yoga classes together.

Apps We've Found Helpful

When building digital lessons, it's helpful to reduce the number of external links on your online learning platform. For example, if you want students to read an article, it's safer to upload a PDF, rather than a link to an external site that may or may not work. This helps ensure that students are always able to access their digital learning resources.

Collaborating: All of our planning materials are shared on Microsoft OneDrive. Like Google Drive, this platform lets us share documents among staff and send students links to documents and folders.

Video: We download YouTube and other videos locally to our computer using the free app 4K Video Downloader, and then upload them to OneDrive (you can do this with Google Drive as well). Make sure to download captions.

Readings: When assigning students articles from sites like Newsela and CommonLit, we download the articles onto our computer as a PDF and then upload them to OneDrive. This allows us to label files by reading level and have all the resources for a lesson in the same place.

Videoconferencing: Moodle has its own video conferencing platform, but Zoom is a very convenient way to have live classes with students-and it is now free for schools. The platform also lets you share your desktop, which is helpful for PowerPoint presentations, reviewing student work with a class, and modeling how to do online research.

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What Teachers in China Have Learned in the Past Month

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An American whose classroom in Beijing is now online shares what she and her team have learned since the coronavirus hit, just as U.S. teachers make the same shift. Since February 17, I've been teaching 11th-grade humanities writing to students who are self-quarantined in China.

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Amazing Educational Reources
http://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/?fbclid=IwAR1QjaxBW7MnqNj3DcLOU-IY42pmnmHzYLov0saXm1p8Y_H-E0qKWDtjMl4
Has over 800 organized resources
&
School Closures (not a list of closed schools lol)
https://schoolclosures.org/?fbclid=IwAR2kelQRunEgbXvo8sf7DfsZ74XNqcr8GjeCXKHMo6W5nWtSOdM8uO_EW3I

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Bringing ideas and people together session handout. 

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Bringing ideas and people together session handout. 

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Handout presented at the session

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Crowdsource from Home: Basecamp Presentation Mar2020

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The 9 Lies of Distance Learning...and why it’s dangerous for us to believe them...

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The 9 Lies of Distance Learning...and why it’s dangerous for us to believe them...

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Adam's Spark Talk from Basecamp

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The 9 Lies of Distance Learning - Spark Talk

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Flipping into Distance Learning with Flipgrid Questions ANSWERED :) 

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Flipping into Distance Learning with Flipgrid Questions ANSWERED :) 

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This article is a great followup and blends themes from iGen and iLearning.

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"So, what's going on in the world?" I asked. "Anything you want to talk about?"

I had a sense of where today's class would go after one student walked in and - instead of his usual fist bump - he offered me an elbow bump, to which we simultaneously said, "Corona."

I've started my English class like this for most of my 20 years in the high school classroom, the majority of which I've spent with seniors in a dual-credit class. As an instructional coach, I encourage teachers to use a class warm-up activity, a "Do Now," to quote Doug Lemov's "Teach Like a Champion" book. My own Do Now isn't a lesson about finding appropriate places for commas; mine is just getting a pulse for what national and global stories have caught my students' eyes and ears.

I've seen a half-dozen raised hands each day this week, and each student wanted to talk about the coronavirus, so I worked my way around the room. Most discussions began with similar phrases: "Did you hear about ...," "I read yesterday that ...," or "I saw on Twitter, and I don't know if it's true, but ..."

As we talked, I was reminded of the hope that I think we - Boomers, Gen Xers, even Millennials - need to have in Gen Z. They're curious, they're passionate, they're concerned, they're seeking input like Johnny 5 in the movie "Short Circuit."

Of course, my students have wanted to know if we'll have school next week, but they've also brought up the hypocrisy of keeping schools in session: "Why are they banning gatherings of 250 people when we have a school over 3,000?" "Why aren't we all getting tested if we want to track this thing?"

I try not to endorse any politics with the students, but we talk politics all the time because - let's face it - it's news. We talked about President Trump's speech about the coronavirus, especially in light of our study earlier this year of the speech President George W. Bush made in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Did they feel more comforted? Did they feel more afraid? What was the tone? Or as we often say in this rhetoric class: What did they say, how did they say it, was it successful?

Among my students are athletes whose seasons have just been canceled, and students in the musical who know it may not be safe to gather 600 people to watch them perform on Sunday, but - like our basketball players - don't want to be forced to abandon what they've worked so hard toward, especially when they don't necessarily have the confidence in their leaders, both locally and nationally.

During the course of this school year, my students have opened class discussions talking about topics such as fires in the Brazilian rainforest, presidential debates, the need for guns or the need to regulate them to prevent mass shootings, and so much more. Over the years, I've modified my belief in what I'm even doing in the classroom, what my goal is. The goal of these class openers is this: Develop a generation of informed citizens who can communicate their opinions as they work for change.

I believe Gen Z will meet this moment. After all, these are the young people who marched out of their classes after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida; these are the young people who asked me whom to speak with about the changes in school lunch nutritional requirements; these are the young people who were excited when our school librarians came in and registered them to vote.

There's still so much we don't know about the current outbreak, such as if we have enough supplies should we need to stay indoors, or if all of our students on free- and reduced-price lunch will get fed if we're off school for an extended time. We still don't know if we are overreacting or underreacting.

So we've been following these kindergarten rules from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention, and doing our best: We've been coughing into our elbows, washing our hands while singing the ABC's (or the chorus to Toto's "Africa," which also lasts 20 seconds), and respecting each other's personal space.

But as these children are 17 and not 7, they want more answers. They don't want to just follow the directions and guidelines imposed on them; they want to know if those making the decisions have their best interests - their survival - in mind, or if the adults in their lives are just making it up as they go and are masking the same fears they have.

On Friday afternoon, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered all schools in our state to close by Tuesday and to stay shuttered until at least March 30. When we're back in class, I'm guessing we'll keep on bumping elbows, and washing our hands while singing our ABCs. And until we have more and better answers, I know what we'll be talking about each day when I ask them, "What's going on in the world? What's on your mind?"
Brian Newman has been teaching English at Joliet West High School in Joliet, Illinois, for 20 years. He holds a master's degree in English from Elmhurst University.
First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

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Coronavirus reinforced what I already know about Gen Z. I believe they will meet this moment.

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"So, what's going on in the world?" I asked. "Anything you want to talk about?" I had a sense of where today's class would go after one student walked in and - instead of his usual fist bump - he offered me an elbow bump, to which we simultaneously said, "Corona."

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ISTE Chicago 2018 - Poster session

At the top of this website is a 6 minute YouTube video on how I use Google Slides as a portfolio system for 650 students.  I have a google website that organizes all of their links.  It takes a bit of effort to setup - but then you can see all of the students' work in just one or two clicks.  This provides a great student-centric view of learning.

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3. They know what their students are learning - s tudents create share quality, engaging ideas often

Easy access to all student portfolios

Online portfolios provide solid examples of student work during parent-teacher conferences.

Students can share immediately on classroom Smartboard:

on iPads using AirPlay (Apple TV)

on chromebooks or computers - put into their portfolios, and teacher can share (student-centric view of learning)

on any device - Google Classroom (assignment-centric view of learning)

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Google Portfolios and Google Scope & Sequence

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3. They know what their students are learning - s tudents create share quality, engaging ideas often Easy access to all student portfolios Online portfolios provide solid examples of student work during parent-teacher conferences.

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Bring your drink of choice to unwind after a day of learning together.

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

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Distance Learning that MOVES you: Virtual PE

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Distance Learning that MOVES you: Virtual PE

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You can find the slide deck attached.  Please do not hesitate to email with questions or to share additional resources.

BrGitlin@ccsd.ws

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Distance Learning that MOVES you - Virtual PE

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Thanks, everyone, for sharing so many wonderful resources!

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#BasecampPD-Keeping Students Connected and Engaged 3_17

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Screencasting to Enhance Distance Learning

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Screencasting to Enhance Distance Learning

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Feel free to reach out for additional resources orlando.kristie@ryeschools.org

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Basecamp PD: Screencasting to Enhance Distance Learning

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Padlet as a Powerful Tool for Collaboration

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Padlet as a Powerful Tool for Collaboration

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Email me for more resources at orlando.kristie@ryeschools.org

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Basecamp PD: Padlet as a Powerful Tool for Collab  (3/2020)

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Here is a link to the screencast we created in our session today.  Thanks to the 100+ participants who helped make this such a great experience!

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Here is a link to the screencast we created in our session today. Thanks to the 100+ participants who helped make this such a great experience!

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Wooclap for presentation and student feedback.

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Wooclap for presentation and student feedback.

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Please use your cell phone or second screen to go to www.wooclap.com/KSTYCG

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See how this screencast can help daily instruction.

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Effective Use of Tech in Math Recording of Today's Session! 

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Effective Use of Tech in Math Recording of Today's Session! 

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I hope this works! Thank you for attending our session today. If you didn't get to attend here is our video.

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Presented

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Below you will find a Google Doc (and linked Slides presentation) that represents the collaborative thoughts and resources from participants. Please feel free to access and add to!

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Student-Driven Unit Design and Helpful Hints

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Presentation on SEL: History and how it fits into MTSS.

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Presentation on SEL: History and how it fits into MTSS.

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Google Forms for Differentiated, Student-Directed Learning and Data Collection

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Google Forms for Differentiated, Student-Directed Learning and Data Collection

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Presentation link with resources, notes, templates, etc. Feel free to reach out to me if

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Google Forms for Differentiated, Student-Directed Learning and Data Collection Kelley Posch Algebra 1 Teacher - Mahopac CSD @MrsPosch_MHS poschk@mahopac.org

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ISTE Chicago 2018 - Poster session

At the top of this website is a 6 minute YouTube video on how I use Google Slides as a portfolio system for 650 students.  I have a google website that organizes all of their links.  It takes a bit of effort to setup - but then you can see all of the students' work in just one or two clicks.  This provides a great student-centric view of learning.

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3. They know what their students are learning - s tudents create share quality, engaging ideas often

Easy access to all student portfolios

Online portfolios provide solid examples of student work during parent-teacher conferences.

Students can share immediately on classroom Smartboard:

on iPads using AirPlay (Apple TV)

on chromebooks or computers - put into their portfolios, and teacher can share (student-centric view of learning)

on any device - Google Classroom (assignment-centric view of learning)

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Google Portfolios and Google Scope & Sequence

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3. They know what their students are learning - s tudents create share quality, engaging ideas often Easy access to all student portfolios Online portfolios provide solid examples of student work during parent-teacher conferences.

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Copy of Adapting a Unit for Distance Learning 

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Here is a possible planning template for distance learning with an example at the bottom

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Flipping into Distance Learning with Flipgrid Resources

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Flipping into Distance Learning with Flipgrid Resources

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Here is our presentation. Thank you for all that attended this morning. I will add video later today.

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iLearning 101 Session: For those who don't know where to start.

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iLearning 101 Session: For those who don't know where to start.

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Basecamp iLearning 101 - Where do I start? 

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Here is the link to the resources from our session about staying sane and social in an era of social distancing! This includes our PPT as well. Doc is editable for participants to add more resources!

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Social Studies During Social Distancing: --Pragmatic Solutions in Unprecedented Times

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Routines & Check ins - tips from Anthony Kim

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Thank you so much for leading, inspiring and connecting. You are forever a guiding light....

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Please use the coupon code BooksAndBooks inside of my digital learning community to take any of my professional learning courses for free.

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IPadpalooza 2017 Improviser's Mindset & Education Technology

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Bring Your Own "Yes, And . . ." The Improviser's Mindset & Ed Tech #iPLZA17 @WickedDecent DanRyder207.com http://bit.ly/iplza17improv

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Free Digital Courses for Middle and High School Writers Designed by Angela Stockman

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Free Digital Courses for Middle and High School Writers Designed by Angela Stockman

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If you are looking for ready-made digital writing courses for your middle and high school students, I designed them over the weekend. Follow the link below, and scroll to the bottom of the page! They are free, and kids can access directly. Each session includes a mini-lesson taught by yours truly and an invitation to multi-modal writing.

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Tools for creating an active home - Physical Activity & PE 

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Tools for creating an active home - Physical Activity & PE 

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There are 2 types of tools on this page. On the left, you'll find games and calendars for families to use to make their home an Active Home. On the right, you'll find resources to help teachers and parents partner together to provide meaningful movement opportunities that progress students toward physical education and social & emotional learning outcomes. Check back often for updates.

Created by: Nick Kline, Aaron Hart, Rich Wiles, Brian Devore, Brandon Herwick, Jim DeLine, Lynn Hefele, Tanner Roos, Will Potter, Ross Chakrain, Michael Utz, Ben Pirillo, Christina Courtney, Shannon Maly, Ashely Sharp Special Contributions: Lori Rose Benson, Deedi Brown, Jennifer Truong, Asia Kehl

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There are 2 types of tools on this page. On the left, you'll find games and calendars for families to use to make their home an Active Home.

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Read the World Distance & Digital Learning Support

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*Let's try to include episodes outside of pedagogy.

Poet David Whyte on the connection between Science and Nature

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In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with poet David Whyte about the importance of work and relationships, the balance between training and expressing of one's talents, the lessons of mortality, and other topics.
SUBSCRIBE to continue listening and gain access to all content on samharris.org/subscribe.

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#184 — the conversational nature of reality

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‎Making Sense with Sam Harris: #184 - The Conversational Nature of Reality on Apple Podcasts

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‎In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with poet David Whyte about the importance of work and relationships, the balance between training and expressing of one's talents, the lessons of mortality, and other topics. SUBSCRIBE to continue listening and gain access to all conte...

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This is a beautiful book that makes distinction between meetings and gatherings.

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Free eLearning/Remote Learning Resources for Teachers and Parents (PreK-12)

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eLearning/Remote Learning Resources for Teachers and Parents (PreK-12) In response to the recent wave of school closures, education-focused organizations from around the world have offered their teaching and learning solutions to teachers and parents for free. The following is a curated list…

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https://www.albert.io/blog/tools-for-distance-learning/

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Making the Transition to Online Learning

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Making the Transition to Online Learning

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Making the Transition to Online Learning 

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Some thoughts on relationship building and sustaining, regardless of current circumstances.

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Here is the presentaiton I am using for the 10 AM session.

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Our Littlest Learners:  What they need & How we can help

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This web page is a list of free resources.

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Walkthrough: how to Upload a video to LMS Canvas

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Walkthrough: how to Upload a video to LMS Canvas