FTT - eLearning

Snow Day? Polar Vortex? What would an eLearning day look like? 

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

There's nothing like getting that wonderful pre-recorded phone call from the superintendent at 9:00 pm the night before school calling for a Snow Day. That's the short term me getting just as excited as the students to shovel, drink coffee, and watch the snow pile up. Long term me understands that there's a chance we'll have to make up that missed day in the summer. So, can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we be safe at home during extreme weather events, while still making meaningful connections with our students? Nothing can completely replace face-to-face learning, but we can try our best.

So first: What's considered eLearning? Besides the obvious, distance learning shouldn't be all that different from traditional classes. Good teaching is good teaching whether we're sitting in the same place or not. You'll find below many of our previous blog posts to support you as you figure out what an eLearning lesson plan might look like for you.

Synchronous Learning: 

This type of learning is where staff and students interact in real-time. All participants can virtually meet through video conferencing, live chat rooms, or streamed lectures. Synchronous learning has the obvious benefits of direct and immediate interactions between teachers and their students, thus making for an easy transition.

Google Meet (Hangouts)

With all of our students equipped with Chromebooks, we are in good shape to hold video conferences for large group discussions, lectures, and other forms of learning. We'll all just have to peel off the tape or band aids we've all placed on our cameras haha. BTW you can even integrate a Google Slides presentation to your Google Meet! Take a look at our full blog post on Google Meet for the play-by-play.

BackChannels

A BackChannel is essentially a chat room that students can access and utilize parallel to the "main" activity going on. It can be a great way for students to communicate with each other without requiring the class to pause. If you feel nostalgic for AOL chat rooms, you might be a millennial. Check out our full blog post on BackChannels.

Asynchronous Learning:

Anyone who's taken an online masters course has probably experienced asynchronous learning, and probably appreciated the flexible, do-on-your-own-pace style of assignments. While synchronous learning can be great, you really need students to be on the ball with timing, and technical difficulties can be disastrous. So what can we do besides asking students to read an article and answer questions on a Google Doc?

EdPuzzle

Turn your video into a lesson! EdPuzzle allows you to take any YouTube video and make it interactive. Through EdPuzzle you can create interactive questions that pop up during strategic points of your video. User analytics and question placement helps ensure students are actually watching your videos. This time we have TWO previous blog posts: EdPuzzle Blog and  EdPuzzle/Schoology integration Blog

FlipGrid

The current generation of kids for some reason like making videos of themselves. This is proven by their obsessions with SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok, and other video apps. FlipGrid tries to capture that drive by giving students an opportunity to express themselves via video feed. Instead of posing a question on Google Docs and having them fill out a paragraph, you can pose a question on FlipGrid and students can video-record their responses. Again check out our full blog post on FlipGrid.

We're Ready

As you can tell, we're already well set up to embrace eLearning days. There are so many awesome tech tools that we can utilize for distance learning. So while a certain strain of coronavirus seems to be weighing heavy on our minds, our staff and students can be well prepared for rain, snow, cold, or virus. Do you have any other tips for eLearning days? Let us know below!