Online learning. Many of us have become intimately acquainted with what this means over the final quarter of the 2019-2020 school year, due to schools being closed in Ohio to help mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. Online learning has its pros and cons, as we are all learning. As a new teacher, I got better at my job by reflecting. This blog became a forum for me to do that, and to occasionally touch base with other teachers. Because I have never taught remotely, I have a lot to learn, and part of that learning process is reflecting over what works and what doesn't.
Video Lessons
Conducting class online eliminates a lot of the distractions that come with having anywhere from ten to twenty eight teenagers together in one room. If someone smells, for instance, it's not an issue in Google Meet.
Beyond the elimination of this kind of distraction, we tend to spend quite a bit of energy expressing ourselves. This can be positive and this can be negative. It might be nice to be able to mute a student in the classroom. Students that want to do well may spend time enriching the classroom by sharing their thoughts and talents thereby motivating others to step up their respective game. This is positive as long as the environment allows it to happen.
On the other hand, students can also use their influence (talents, thoughts) to oppose what the teacher wants to accomplish, poisoning the environment and making it a negative experience. For instance a student that refuses to sit in their desk is free to stand in a Meet and it won't be considered strange. This freedom is something I believe students value. To be fair, I've encountered very little negative distractions in Google Meet, however, participation was very limited too... and herein lies an issue: if you're relying on Meet for direct instruction, which, in my exposure to pedagogical theory, has become a dirty word anyway, you may be setting yourself up for failure.... yet how often do we default to this model in our classrooms? I have found the five minute limit of Screencastify has challenged me to get to the point in a lesson. This has been good for me. In a classroom environment I am, I admit, likely to start picking the tangential flowers of a lecture, which is time consuming, and sometimes confusing to students (albeit occasionally fruit-bearing). Encapsulating the core of the lesson in a video is strangely satisfying. (Like in this paragraph, I moved from talking about the students providing challenges to Screencastify presenting a challenge. It's a bit of a tangent, but sometimes that's where the good ideas live.)
I have seen time and again on YouTube comments, for a video explaining a grammar concept for instance, that the video taught the idea in a few minutes opposed to a real live teacher prattling away for hours to no avail. If you search you will find many comments expressing how people didn't learn it in school but learned it on YouTube. While I am tempted to dismiss these comments, I find I cannot. I think there's something to it. I suppose the most important ingredient is that now they care for some reason. But not only can you replay a video as many times as you need to "learn" the lesson, it also requires you to click on it. This may seem like a stupid point, but think about it. Where's the agency in a standard classroom? How often do students feel imprisoned in a classroom and here comes the teacher jabbering away? Students may be thinking,"I didn't ask for this. I wish there was a timer bar like on YouTube so I know how long they're going to be talking." The point here is that with a video lesson, it is up to the student to click play. This is a component that is missing from the classroom of a required K-12 subject. It is a small thing, but it puts the learner in charge in a way that is lacking in a face to face arrangement, and I believe students value autonomy.
I'm a novice at online teaching. What is working for the rest of you? How might a teacher continue to build challenge, critical thinking, and choice into online learning? What about video lessons?
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