Remote Learning
Want help with any of the technology or pedagogy mentioned below? Email me, or drop by the library, and we can do some co-planning together or just brainstorm ideas for you!
Planning Considerations
Questions to consider when planning the quadmester:
Are there expectations that are better addressed at school or at home? Could some be addressed at home mostly or only?
Are there expectations that can be done synchronously with the in-person and at-home cohorts even if they are not at the same point in the course?
E.g. identify scientists, including Canadians (e.g., David Suzuki, Howard Alper, Roberta Bondar, Kenneth Hill), who have made a contribution to the fields of science under study
E.g. apply mathematical skills correctly in food preparation tasks (e.g., convert between imperial and metric measurements; convert between measures based on weight and those based on volume; calculate yield changes)
Google Meets
Breakout Rooms
Use Breakout Rooms to place students in smaller groups where they can work together on a task. The teacher can stay in the main room or can visit different rooms to help groups or listen to them work.
Meet Nickname
Use a nickname - instead of a link or calendar invite - to create your Meets. This prevents students from getting in before you arrive unsupervised, or staying in the Meet after it's over (or rejoining it again later once you've left).
Present Screen AND See your Students
3 different ways to be able to see your students in the Meet (& the chat) while presenting your screen; 2nd monitor, 2nd device, or split-screen windows.
Q&A Tool
Students can ask questions, upvote each other's questions, teacher can mark questions as answered (you answer the question orally in the Meet). A good way to ensure important questions get seen and answered when the chat window gets too busy with other conversations.
Whiteboard Tools
Want to write on a digital whiteboard using a touch-screen device? Canvas and Jamboard are two options; either to use as the teacher only OR to use collaboratively with students.
Polls Tool
Ask multiple choice questions that students answer/vote on.
Layout Options
Change your view to see only one speaker or all participants at once.
Host Controls
Turn off the ability for the students to use the chat or share their screens. Turning off the chat might be a good way to force the use of the Q&A feature (see above).
Custom Background
Change or blur your background so that participants cannot see the actual room that you are in. Note that this does not work on OCDSB Chromebooks at the moment (not b/c the board has blocked the feature but b/c Google has only made it available on higher-processing devices so far).
Raise Hand Feature
Can be used by participants to indicate they have a question or would like to speak.
Troubleshooting Google Meets Glitches
These are some of the most common fixes if you're experience various performance issues in Google Meets
Removing Extensions
Our Tech coaches have suggested that several extensions can cause performance issues & should be removed from your Chrome browser.
Power Down Daily
Rather than simply closing the lid of your chromebook & putting it to sleep, it's helpful to do a full proper Power Down of your Chromebook each evening.
Log Out & Back In
Sometimes simply leaving the Meet & re-entering will fix any issues.
Synchronous Activities between At-Home Cohort and the Teacher
The ministry is requiring us to provide some synchronous learning for the at-home cohort each day. Here are some ideas that have come up in brainstorming sessions I've been a part of with colleagues and admin.
Here are at least 3 ways to achieve this:
Have your support/supervision teacher be present in the classroom with your in-school cohort while they work independently from you for a period of time. You can use that time to be online synchronously with the at-home cohort in a quieter space outside your classroom.
While the in-school cohort works independently from you, you can work synchronously with the at-home cohort in the same room.
The at-home cohort works on an assigned task with synchronous support/help from the supervision teacher (so long as this doesn't require extra planning on the part of the support/supervision teacher).
Some ideas of activities you could do with your at-home cohort synchronously:
Play a Kahoot (share your screen on Google Meet, students can split-screen between Kahoot & the Meet)
Have a discussion about some assigned material (practice problems, class reading, video they watched...)
Have the students at home do some problem solving on a JamBoard together in Google Meet.
Students work on a task in Google Slides where each student or small group has 1 slide in a collaborative slide deck created by the teacher. The teacher (and any student) can go between slides to see the work in progress & give feedback.
Give students a prompt and have them all post their response or a link or an image to a Wakelet (like a collaborative bulletin board).
Run a Desmos activity synchronously with your students (teacher-paced). There are some cool ways you use this Math tool for classes that aren't math!
Teach a short lesson using Pear Deck in order to create an interactive presentation where students can respond to your prompts & their anonymous answers can be displayed for the class.
Host a guest speaker on Google Meet (this is one with the potential to have both cohorts in the same synchronous activity).
Have ideas I should add? Email laura.wheeler@ocdsb.ca with your suggestions.
If there are ways you can do the above with both the in-school and at-home cohort together synchronously, then even better (according to the ministry). But let's all be mindful that often our in-class cohort and our at-home cohort are not at the same point in the course due to the schedule format this year.
Ideas for Asynchronous Activities for the At-Home Cohort
Students work on a task in Google Slides where each student or small group has 1 slide in a collaborative slide deck created by the teacher. The teacher (and any student) can go between slides to see the work in progress & give feedback.
Give students a prompt and have them all post their response or a link or an image to a Wakelet (like a collaborative bulletin board).
Desmos activity (there are some cool ways you use this Math tool for classes that aren't math!) in student-paced mode (asynchronous)
Create a video assignment with embedded questions to check for understanding with EdPuzzle
Introduce larger research projects that can overarch a whole unit at the beginning of the unit & have students use their at-home days to work on research notes, rough draft, peer editing & final revisions.
Have Ms. Wheeler (me) present on research skills to your class at home via Google Meet. Or assign the session for them to work on at their own pace.
Have students record oral presentations on video (they can use Screencastify to present their slides & speak at the same time). They can post a link to their video (saved in Drive) to your LMS. Have students watch each other's presentations. Use a Google Form to collect their reflections, questions or feedback about each presentation.
Assign a movie (curriculum-linked of course) to watch at home from the Learn 360 or Criterion on Demand databases (both accessed via the VLE --> Grades 7-12 --> Learn360).
Assign a reading to read, or video to watch, at home, then have students:
- answer related questions or do practice problems
- write a reflection
- create a sketchnote summary
What are some other activity types you're using with your at-home cohort for asynchronous learning? Email laura.wheeler@ocdsb.ca with your suggestions.