Teachers were exhausted. Students were tired. Tech and Admin were looking for the nearest couch to crash on. That pretty much sums up what Friday looked like after our first full week of eLearning. Our teachers had implemented new communication tools such as Zoom and Hangouts Meet, converted their lesson plans into a format that could be successful in an online platform, and supported our students throughout this process.
We are running our regular schedule of classes so students check-in at the beginning of every class period starting at 7:45am and our last class finishes at 2:20pm. Everyone takes the same break from 11:55-12:45 for lunch/relaxation and there is no check-in for study hall. Parents & students appreciate this structure but by the end of the week, students were a little tired of ‘going to school’ all day. The students with the mindset of ‘this is school and we are still expected to learn & produce’ are doing very well. The students with a mindset of ‘this is a lot of work during a break’ are struggling the most. We need to have good communication with our families that this is not a break, and although we are running the school in a different way, it’s still business as usual.
We have used Schoology for 5 years, Google Suite for at least 8 years, and so many different iPad apps that we felt ready to go. We have been 1:1 iPads for 6 years and our teachers do an amazing job utilizing that technology in the classroom. What we weren’t ready for was how much work it would be to make new lessons that were effective in what had now become an online course.
Every morning our principal started the day with a Google Hangouts Meet session so we could hear from teachers about how they were doing and what we could do to help them. Every afternoon our principal posted a FlipGrid prompt to see how we were doing and what they could share to help others. TBH – we looked really tired during those first few days.
Teachers were still trying to control the classroom, grade the work, give direct instruction, take attendance, etc… Some teachers didn’t fully understand that no matter how much we tried to make our online classroom look like our physical classroom, that wasn’t going to happen; and even worse, it was draining their energy while we tried to pound that square peg into the round hole.
The answer was right in front of us the whole time. Good pedagogy is good pedagogy. We needed to start at ground zero and build a new structure for these online classes that would be easy to follow for our students. We created expectations for our students that were clear and easy to follow. These expectations in video chats and discussion boards really helped bring the best out in our students.
As our teachers have implemented these new structures and expectations, our students have come along with us. We’ll see how week #2 pans out, but we are already seeing more of a light at the end of the tunnel and the stress levels have come way down as we begin week 2.
We have found the most success with the following tools:
- Zoom
- Hangouts Meet
- Schoology
- Google Drive Assignments (in Schoology)
- Hangouts Chat
- Schoology quiz/test for bell ringers and
exit slips/tickets - Screecastify and Screencast-O-Matic
- Google Suite & iPads (kind of a no-brainer here)
Behind the Scenes of a 1:1 Initiative 