Innovation under pressure

Hello Ashly, and others,

This is a long reply because you have triggered several things I have been thinking about that I hope might interest many teachers here who are now working in a purely online, remote or distance teaching and learning environment.

Zoom is now a widely-used online "videoconferencing" tool for adult basic skills education classes.  The free version typically allows up to a 40-minute session, but for educators during the pandemic, time is no longer limited in the free account. Recently there have been some problems that have emerged with privacy and security. Zoom says it has its engineers focused on these issues now instead of developing new features. There have been many reports of "Zoom bombing" where uninvited guests break into online classes and say racist, pornographic and other obscene things. As you may know, when you create a new Zoom session and invite participants you can password protect that. It's an extra step for those logging in, but probably a good idea. Also, it's probably a good idea just to email your students a Zoom invitation, not to post it on a public website.

Ashly, you mentioned some of the things you do as an online teacher:

• Let students see you (at least your face), what you look like, what you say and do, presumably to make it a more personal experience
• Use (digital) tools that your students are familiar with
• Communicate with and prep students before a lesson
• Coax students during the lesson
• Follow up after the lesson

Ashly, I would like to hear more about -- in a remote, online or distance education environment -- the tools  you have found that your students are familiar with, how you prep students before a lesson, what you do when you "coax" them during a lesson, and how you follow up after a lesson.

This is all helpful advice, and I wonder if you could describe other important things that you do as an in-person teacher, and if you have found an on-line equivalent, what that is. For examples, if in an in-person classroom, you:

• Model technology skills, reading or writing or math skills,  or critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Model accurately describing the gist or main idea of of a paragraph, passage or piece of writing
• Model thinking about ways to solve a math problem
• Model attending to both big ideas and to details
• Help students to actively engage in rich discussion, for example about a reading assignment or solving a math problem
• Help students evaluate and, as needed, revise their work assignments
• Engage students in participating in structured, peer-to-peer learning in small groups
• Require students to prepare and show multimedia presentations of their individual or group learning research projects
• etc.

if you have found them, what are online equivalents for each of the things you do as an in-person teacher?

You may have noticed that I don't refer to "face-to-face" as distinct from online teaching and learning. That's because I have found that a lot of what teachers do in-person in a classroom can be done face-to-face online. Not everything, of course. If you were teaching an online Zoom class in baking, for example, you could ask learners one-at-a-time to share their screens so you could evaluate the look of a pie they have baked. You might even get a sense of the texture of the crust by asking a learner to stick a fork in it, but you cannot know if the flavor is right without being there to taste it. One of the big challenges for online teaching and learning is how to do direct, authentic assessment. Ashly, since you have a lot of experience with personalized online learning taking place in an in-person classroom, during class, and you are the go-to person in adult basic skills education for creating and using HyperDocs (and "HyperWakelets"?) perhaps you have some ideas about how to address authentic assessment in an online environment. 

One way to understand the differences between in-person and online teaching is to think about "equivalencies, limitations and advantages." For example, you described an equivalent way online of personalizing learning where students can see your face (and in gallery view on Zoom, you could also see their faces if they have video cameras, and have them turned on). Maybe that is only a rough, not an exact, equivalent, but it's worth noting, using and sharing,

Here's where I am going with this: you distinguished a "remote" lesson from a "normal" lesson. Of course we all understand what you mean, normal was an in-person classroom, in a physical space, a time-honored way of teaching and learning. However, in the post-pandemic world we hope to return to as soon as possible, I don't think learners or teachers will want to return to an old "normal" 100% in-person model. They will want to take advantage of what is best done in-person and best done on-line,  a hybrid or blended (integrating in-person and online) learning model. In emergencies such as we are experiencing now  -- I believe there will be others, both because we have experienced other serious viruses such as "bird Flu: and "Ebola" and because epidemiologists have told us to expect more,  and because world environmental emergencies such as those we have already experienced in the U.S., are expected to rise -- educators and learners will again want to take full advantage of the opportunities of distance education, and remote or online teaching and learning to provide the best continuity in education possible during these periods of interruption.

In a separate post, I will invite Integrating Technology and Program Management members, and other LINCS group members who may be interested, to contribute to a GoogleDoc I have begun to prepare, about the equivalencies, limitations and advantages of online teaching and learning as compared with in-person teaching and learning. Let's all think together about this and learn from each other what online teaching and learning tools may provide good opportunities for equivalent -- or possibly at times superior -- learning in a remote or online environment as compared with in-person teaching. I am not suggesting that we should do away with in-person teaching and learning, but that we should understand in this new world of vastly greater learning opportunities, what are the advantages of each mode for what kinds of students learning what and under what conditions?

I hope you will want to join me in thinking about these equivalencies, limitations and advantages.

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management groups

Hello Colleagues,

On April 5th I wrote "Do you use WhatsApp? Have you found good WhatsApp equivalent practices to what you have done in your in-person teaching? Would you like to share your ideas with others in a format like this?

====================================================================================================

In-person teaching practice                      Detailed examples of good practices using WhatsApp as an online equivalent

Model skills or learning strategies              Make videos directly on WhatsApp.

====================================================================================================

If so, email me for access to a Google Doc where you can contribute. When it's done, I will post a link where anyone who wishes can see the document. For now, I only want to hear from those who have WhatsApp equivalent teaching practices to add. Thanks."

So far, no one has taken me up on this. How about you? Are you interested in helping to put this together? Email me.

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management Groups

djrosen123@gmail.com