Before we do ANYTHING else in this class, you need to understand how you to get help when you need help. The information below will walk you through how to use our class PARKING LOT to both ASK QUESTIONS and get ANSWERS to your questions - especially for all those times when we are doing asynchronous learning activities.
Before we move on, we need to understand a couple of terms: asynchronous and synchronous. You'll be hearing those terms a lot and we need to make sure you are comfortable with the meaning of those terms and how they apply to your different learning environments this school year.
In terms of learning, a synchronous environment is when we are all doing the same thing at the same time - like when we are all together doing class in a classroom. We are in "sync." An asynchronous learning environment (meaning we are "not in sync") is when I give you work and then you do it on your own time in your own environment. Homework would be a traditional example of asynchronous learning.
With our distance learning, we can create both asynchronous and synchronous learning environments. I could assign you work and tell you that you must digitally submit it to me in three days (asynchronous) OR I could conduct a live stream video session where we are all interacting with each other at the same time (synchronous).
Time is your enemy in an asynchronous environment - especially when you need help.
When school is in session, you typically only have to wait until the next day of class to get your question answered. However, in an asynchronous learning environment, it could be multiple days - especially if you rely on email as the primary form of communication. Here's an example:
Let's say I digitally assign you an asynchronous assignment early on a Monday. I tell you it's due by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday. You are free to work on it and submit it whenever you want as long as it is in by the due date/time. You look at the assignment and figure you can knock it out in an hour. You wait until Wednesday to start the assignment. You start the assignment around 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday. About 15 minutes in you get stuck and have a question. You send an email. However, I've already done my work for the day, and I have evening plans, and I don't check my email until the morning. I don't see your email, you don't get your answer, and you don't get your assignment correctly submitted on time. Plus, 11 other people had similar questions about the assignment but they sent their emails earlier and got answers to their questions. In this case, because you waited, you missed out.
I cannot stress this enough: TIME is always your enemy in an asynchronous environment.
This situation would probably never happen in a regular classroom setting because as soon as I started getting questions on this assignment I would have made an announcement to the class on Monday, Tuesday, or even Wednesday so that EVERYONE would get the benefit of the answer.
Unless we set up better communication structures and systems, we will continue to run in to this TIME problem.
So, to try to tackle this problem, we have two primary systems in place for this school year:
The Daily Announcements
The Question Parking Lot
We will tackle the Daily Announcements in our next activity. Here we are going to tackle the Question Parking Lot.
The Question Parking Lot is where you will ask ALL your class questions (or send in class comments). You will NOT use email. In fact, due to the nation-wide closures of many school districts my email inbox is constantly flooded with education advertisements claiming all sorts of miracle distance learning solutions. It is a huge waste of my time sorting through all this useless junk. So, again, do NOT send an email to me with a class question.
The Question Parking Lot is a simple Google Form where you can submit a class question or comment. When you submit a question, it populates it into a spreadsheet. There is an embedded version of that spreadsheet on the home page of this website.
Names are hidden from view from this spreadsheet so all questions post anonymously. Periodically throughout the day I will edit the spreadsheet in order to give brief answers to the questions that have been posed. More detailed answers to those questions will be posted in each day's Daily Announcements.
While this doesn't perfectly simulate the classroom experience, it does offer advantages over sending email requests:
Since the spreadsheet is publicly viewable, every student has the benefit of seeing every questions/comment that has been posted (just like you can hear all the questions of your classmates in a classroom). Plus, from a teacher standpoint, I only have to answer each question once and everyone has access to it.
If you notice that someone has already asked the same question you had, you don't need to submit your own question. You can just check the spreadsheet for the answer.
Since questions post anonymously, it might encourage some of our not-yet-assertive classmates to ask questions they might not otherwise do in a large group, classroom setting. To be clear, though: You name is attached to all questions that are posted. I know who posts them. Student names, however, are hidden from the public view.
You should submit any questions/comments to the Question Parking Lot Form as soon as they come up. You should interact with the Question Parking Lot Spreadsheet multiple times per day. Before you start any work, you should always check to see if any new questions (and answers) have been posted. It will save you a lot of headache in the long-run if you do.
To help you out, a link to the spreadsheet is always on the home page of our class website. Ideally, though, you should bookmark this spreadsheet document and add it to your browser tool bar for quick and easy access.
Brief answers to questions will be posted in the Question Parking Lot Spreadsheet. More detailed answers to the previous day's questions will be posted in the Daily Announcements. The Daily Announcements will usually post no later than 7:30 AM on every school day. Any question from the previous day/evening/night/early morning - basically anything posted before 5:00 a.m. - will be more thoroughly answered, as needed, in the current Daily Announcement Post.
In order to get you comfortable using the Question Parking Lot, you are going to go there now and do two things:
Post a question or comment to the PARKING LOT FORM
Bookmark the form in your browser so that you will have easy access to the form in the future.
When you post, keep in mind a few things:
Obviously it should go without saying that you need to keep your comment/question school-appropriate.
For this first interaction, you can post:
a question (if you have one already)
a comment
a hello message
. . . it can be anything, really. Be creative. Have fun with it. Show me a bit of your personality. Surprise me.
This assignment serves three main purposes:
It gives you practice accessing and using the form so that you know how (and more importantly, where) to pose your questions and comments.
It allows me to double-check the form to make sure everything is working (before we get into the full swing of things)
It gives me just a brief little window of insight into the many personalities that I will be inheriting this school year. Again, surprise me . . . or, do something boring. I don't care. It's your choice. Either way it gives me a little insight into your personality . . . so, have at it.