TEACHERS AND CORONAVIRUS

An American whose class in Beijing is now online shares what she and her team have learned since the coronavirus attack, just as teachers around the world do now.

Since February 17, he has been teaching the humanities in the 11th grade writing to self-assessing students in China: all the teachers in the world have been in the same position for weeks and even months. Now we are teaching virtual classes remotely from our homes in China and in other countries around the world.

We had about half a week to prepare for online school, including creating a digital platform that none of us had used before.

For the first few weeks, we needed to be very flexible and patient that's why we asked educators from meowessay for help. Anything we would have done in person took virtually more time as we learned to navigate online learning. But we have solved many problems and are now engaging our students in high quality online learning experiences.

Since our students have stopped physically attending school, their Chinese classes are held in real time following the regular schedule, using a Chinese application. Our international team teaches using Moodle, an open source learning platform that has the ability to conduct live video conferencing with digital whiteboards and break rooms.

We also use it to give students feedback, do group and pair work, and post class material, which can also be done through Google Classroom.

Here's some of what we've learned so far about teaching stay-at-home students. Start by continuing to use clear and simple lessons, 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 that our teachers post recorded assignments and lessons and students complete work at different times.

Teachers respond using a rubric, comments, and sometimes video or audio recorded comments via our online learning platform.

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

NOT EVERYTHING IS SCREENS

It's easy for students to spend a lot of time in front of their school screens online. Whenever possible, we are assigning students tasks that allow them to get up and move around and away from their devices. We have also been working on ways for students to continue creating art without screens.

Videos: A first grade class recently had an assignment where students needed to describe a pet. The video of the mother of a child was recorded while using descriptive language to introduce her two cats to the audience. Students can also write and act out plays, or create and cook recipes and conduct interviews, and present these assignments via video.

Workbooks and Sketchbooks: Many of our classes at school intentionally used paper workbooks and assignments instead of laptops to reduce students' screen time.

We continue this by having students complete some assignments on paper, taking a photo of their completed work, and uploading the photo to submit the assignment. Similarly, our art classes continue to have students work on drawing, and they are taking photos of their work to present to their teacher and share with the class.

MORE BUREAUCRACY, MORE WORKING HOURS FOR TEACHERS

In addition to live and asynchronous classes, our teachers have three hour shifts daily in the office. They connect to Moodle for the duration of the class and are visible as "online" for any student who visits the page. This allows students to contact a teacher to help them with their homework, and helps our teachers maintain a regular schedule.

TEACHERS AND CORONAVIRUS

This resource is comforting for both students and parents, as it is 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 technical support. From the beginning, we clearly communicate to families how to contact our technical support staff. We remind families and students regularly, at first we did it daily, who to turn to for what kind of support.

We also have our teachers' office hours and IT contact information clearly posted on our online learning site.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Technical support is vital to your successful distance learning. Decide as soon as possible who will be responsible for what type of technical support, and how it will be available to students, families, and staff. Make sure everyone concerned knows how to reach support.

Provide teachers, students, and families with video and written instructions on how to use your platform so they can answer some of their own questions before requesting help.

Many students do not have laptops at home, but in the United States, most families have access to at least one smartphone that has the Internet.

Fortunately, Google for Education and other online learning platforms tend to have good user experiences for smartphones and tablets, as well as computers.

INVOLVE FAMILIES

Between having to find daycare and supervising squirming youth, distance learning can be a very stressful experience for parents. Communicate with them proactively and regularly in media and languages ​​that you know they will actively test and understand. Give them clear instructions and resources. Request, listen and act on their feedback.

And, as you would in school, be sure to inform parents about the great job their children did. Specific work-related compliments go a long way toward strengthening relationships with both families and students.

MORE SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS

At the school, our team has weekly professional development sessions. We have continued this by using our online platform each week with consistent start and end times.

Agendas are developed with our instructional leadership team and distributed to teachers in advance. We divide our time between continuing to work on our year-round approach 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 is even talk of doing virtual yoga classes together.

USEFUL APPLICATIONS

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

• Collaborate: All of our planning materials are shared on Microsoft OneDrive. Like Google Drive, this platform allows us to share documents among staff and send links to documents and folders to students.
• Video: We download YouTube and other videos locally to our computer using the free 4K Video Downloader application, and then we upload them to OneDrive (you can also do it with Google Drive). Make sure to download the subtitles.
• Readings: When we assign students articles from sites like Newsela and CommonLit, we download the articles to our computer in PDF format and then upload them to OneDrive. This allows us to label the files by reading level and have all the resources for a lesson in the same place.
• Videoconferencing: Moodle has its own videoconferencing platform, but Zoom is a very convenient way to have live classes with students and is now free for schools. The platform also allows you to share your desktop, which is useful for PowerPoint presentations, reviewing student work with a class, and modeling how to conduct research online.