Can F2F classes go digital?

 

      For this week's assignment, we were tasked with looking at courses in our schools that could be redesigned to be online courses. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that any class can be converted to an online format.  In fact, teachers are doing this every day to accommodate their virtual learners. For many students, virtual learning is their new reality for many different reasons, and our teachers are stepping up and accommodating them brilliantly. AVID and College and Career Reading are two such courses that can be designed for online learning. 

           AVID is a college and career readiness program that is geared toward the academic middle. This class requires students to be enrolled in at least one course of rigor (Pre-AP, AP or Advanced). This class supports students by helping them with organization and time management skills, writing and critical reading skills, and interpersonal skills. One major piece of all AVID classes is AVID tutorials. Tutors are hired to come into the class twice a week and facilitate a sort of Socratic seminar to help them with their academic classes. Students come prepared with a Tutorial Request Form (TRF) which helps students organize their thinking and drill down to the part of the problem that is confusing or troublesome. This class is a challenge to turn into an online course, but it can be done using interactive tools such as Google meets for virtual tutorials and Google Sites or Slides to build digital notebooks. Most assignments, including the TRF, can be digitized using various apps and tools. Furthermore, due the COVID pandemic, hundreds of colleges and universities have developed virtual tours of their campuses, which allows students to their favorite colleges from the comfort of their own homes.  Moreover, guest speakers can join our class via Zoom or Google Meet, and the students can type questions into the chat, or click the raise hand button to ask questions. 

         College and Career Readiness is a class that prepares 8th graders for college by helping students discover their interests and passions and introducing them to the many high school endorsements and tracks they choose from. These endorsements have been developed to help students gain experience in their areas of interest, thereby paving the way for entry into their chosen college or career path. This class is one that can easily be turned into an online course. Edpuzzle makes it easy to turn any video into a lesson. PearDeck can also be used to turn slides into interactive and collaborative lessons. Every unit can be taught exclusively online, while the teacher facilitates via web conference on a daily or weekly basis. In this instance, the teacher becomes not only a facilitator, but also a valuable resource that students can utilize when they need clarification on lessons and concepts. Teachers can also utilize apps such as Screencastify to record how-to videos or visual aides, and other apps such as Quizlet and Gimkit that can help students learn vocabulary and other facts through the various interactive games and challenges that these kinds of apps have to offer.  Furthermore, there are dozens of  free quality apps and extensions  that teachers can utilize, as well as many more that can be paid for by the district for educational use. In today’s digital world, there are many ways for any class to be redesigned for use as an online course. 

Online Course Design: The Future of Education

    School is back in session, and this course is going to be quite the challenge. We are being tasked with building an online course. I am both excited about this challenge and a bit nervous about it at the same time. 

       After watching the video outlining the different theories (LearningDctr., 2010),  I definitely feel I that I have adopted  a constructivist approach to teaching. I learn by doing, so I tend to teach my students in the same manner. Moreover, I find that my students are more engaged in the learning when I give them enough information to get them started and let them work through the lesson/activity, asking questions as needed. As I design my course, I will take a constructivist approach, while making sure that my learners have an opportunity to reflect on their learning (cognitivism) and apply what they have learned in their own classroom setting (connectivism).   Since "the primary objective of any eLearning course is to give ... learners the information and skills they need to improve some aspect of their lives" (Pappas, 2019), applying Gagne's 9 Events to my online course works very well, providing a path on which to follow. Therefore, I feel Gagne's 9 events will prove invaluable to me as I plan a comprehensive course that  will help my learners meet the objectives. 

          As I began reading about the UbD (Understand by Design) framework, I realized that I already utilize the backwards design process to some degree in most of the lessons I teach already. Now that I am teaching face-to-face and virtually at the same time, I do tend to state  objectives and goals more clearly, in the way of "I will" statements on a daily basis.  When I let students know what the goals and expectations are, they seem to feel more confident in taking the first steps toward reaching those learning goals. Even though this year is my first true experiece teaching virtual students, I have pushed myself toward blended  learning over the past few years. Because I teach in the cafeteria (affectionately referred to as the classeteria), I made the commitment to go 100% digital. I feel that this has prepared me, in a small way, for this course. For this project, I will definitely have to shift my thinking a bit more, so that the modules I create can be completed with little or no face-to-face interaction. 

     Since I will be interviewing for assistant principal and digital learning specialist positions in the very near future, my audience will be adult learners on my prospective  campus. I want to design an online course that will help my teachers gain the skills they need to help their students thrive in a blended or 100% online learning environment. I will use the UbD framework to flesh out  the professional learning plan I created for a previous course, essentially putting that plan into actionable, authentic professional learning modules that I can present to prospective employers. One of the common questions that I have been asked in interviews is "What can I bring to their campus/district?" This online professional learning course will be a great piece to "bring to the table'" so to speak.  One thing has become evident to me: this pandemic has changed the face of education, and we must support our teacher in developing a different approach to teaching to increase their effectiveness in their classrooms (Bates, 2015).

References

Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 1 & 2).Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

LearningDctr.(2010, June 17). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism & Learning and Instructional Theory [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YOqgXjynd0 

Pappas, C. (2019, September 24). How To Apply Gagné's 9 Events Of Instruction In eLearning. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://elearningindustry.com/how-to-apply-gagnes-9-events-of-instruction-in-elearning

Why do we need digital coaches?

   

Why do we need digital learning coaches?   

    I have been teaching for 22 years. In that time, I have ALWAYS had a classroom. However, this summer, I find out that I will NOT have a classroom of my own this year. This caused me to rethink lesson delivery and design, as well as what to do with all of my STUFF! As I was preparing for this school year, I made the decision to go completely digital. Our  students grew accustomed to working out of Google Classroom during the spring when the pandemic chased us all into the comfort of our own homes, and I could simply digitize all of my handouts. To go digital, I knew I needed to spend some time learning how to use the different apps Google had to offer (we are a Google district), so I spent the second half of my summer becoming a Level Two Google Certified Educator. I did not mind doing this, since I embrace technology and enjoy using various programs and apps to learning for my more engaging. This is already paying off, because we are having to post all of our lessons in Google Classroom for our virtual and face-to-face students, in preparation for any micro closures or quarantines that may occur because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Not all teachers are comfortable with technology.

    In fact, I have been helping several of the teachers with digitizing their lessons and coaching them on how to use the different Google apps. I enjoy helping them, but this takes time away from my own curriculum planning time, and quite often I am up late making sure that I have prepared lessons for my own students. This made me think about our district professional learning model and how it really has not prepared our teachers for the level of digital competency needed to thrive in a blended learning environment. The professional learning is offered, but one has to go looking for it. Because they are intimidated by technology, technophobes will not see the value in taking advantage of digital learning courses. This has caused me to really think about our current PL model and what our district can do to help teachers on all levels of digital competency. I have come to the conclusion that teachers would greatly benefit from having a Digital Learning Coach assigned to each campus. This would ensure that teachers would receive the type of personalized, ongoing digital professional learning that they are so desperately in need of. 

Watch my Call-to-Action video below: