The online school: more tips for teachers and students

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Brandon has been online for a while now! Here are some tips for teachers who are about to start sharing the online experience. Above all, don’t feel isolated, we are all in the same boat. 

We use Zoom, Kahoots, Google Docs Pre-Quest (our own platform) and a whole range of other products to try to get the most out of our lessons.

Be interactive – we found that just trying to teach in the same way didn’t really work so we have incorporated annotation, interactive whiteboard hangman as a warm-up, Kahoots and masses of quizzes into our lessons. We tried some of the fun gadgets (wishful thinking tropical backgrounds!) but the novelty factor wore off very quickly.

Get physical – ask students to move for a few minutes during longer lessons. We have a series of go-to stretches for when classes start dozing off!

Try new activities – we tried to think about how we could use technology to help some of our less confident students. As part of their interview skills class, we sent the group questions and they responded with filmed answers.

Be consistent – adapt your classroom rules to your new world and stick to them. We have found that some of our shyer students who are normally reluctant to ask questions in class are really responding to being able to message the teacher privately. 

Be patient – learning online is new for most of us, build in time to get used to the technology (we have a tester task list for each class which incorporates any of the skills they might need). And we have found that… setting up the first few lessons usually takes longer than you expect!

Be prepared – open all your documents and videos in advance. Close everything you don’t need for the lesson and be careful of which screen you share! Our new teachers do practice runs before having live classes. If you can, try to join an online lesson as an observer or teach another teacher.

Be kind to yourself and give yourself time to adapt – change is never easy and we have all been thrown in at the deep end. Courage. 

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