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Early on in this blog series I wrote about how I planned to stick to an asynchronous model within a synchronous timeframe. This included only using Zoom conferences for student questions spontaneously during the lessons when needed. See link below. Starving for the opportunity to interact live with my students, I decided to hold a short live Zoom conference with my student to clarify expectations, and just SEE THEM. See screenshot below. I underestimated how much I needed this!To be honest, I felt myself starting to tear up when I swapped to "gallery view."
This moment reminded me that, while this time is INDEED a revolution for teachers as we strive, and collaborate, and fail, and fail, and iterate, and keep trying...that no simple system, or efficient set of "Google Forms", can replace the incredible connection that just hearing and seeing your student's faces. Emotional... Keeping the above in mind, I plan on doing a live Zoom for our weekly "Check In" (~ 10 minutes) in each class, at least once per week before launching students into the remaining asynchronous portion of the class. I am still buzzing from the emotional connection that simply seeing their faces elicited. From a more technical standpoint, a suggest making sure your Zoom settings include the following to make the process as fluid, and safe, as possible.
Today was a day without students. Besides meetings with colleagues and our community (it was amazing to see their faces!), I spent the majority of the day conducting interviews on Zoom with two individuals whose professions (Dentistry) have been drastically impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Additionally, I conducted an interview with a 9th grade student at my school who is leveraging his passion for CAD and 3D printing to serve his community.
Descriptions and recordings of each interview are listed below (note: permission was given to share by each individual). This is about all I can muster up in a post tonight. Things feel really hard right now... Interview #1: Dr. Cheryl Willett Dr. Willett discusses how the dentists at an incredibly high risk of disease transmission and various design alterations that are needed to their masks and equipment to keep them safe during this time. Dr. Willett challenges my students to address her concerns. Interview #2: Dr. Armen Mirzayan Dr. Mirzayan discusses how he is leveraging CAD, specifically face scanning technology, to create custom masks for dentists keeping in mind Dr. Willett's concerns addressed in the above interview. Dr. Mirzayan challenges my students to address his concerns with eye glass integration into his scans. Interview #3: Aubrey Elder Mr. Elder discusses how he is using his 3D printer, and his incredible passion for CAD, to unite with an organization to assist in printing masks for members of our working community that do not have access. Aubrey will be collaborating with a few of my students in the coming weeks to ramp up production and transition into face shield prototyping. Helping my Medical Biochemistry students develop their literacy skills is a huge priority for me. Comprised of primarily 10th graders, the class revolves around interacting with professional, peer reviewed medical journals, many of which are written with an MD or PhD in mind, not a sophomore in high school. Keeping the above in mind, prior to this phase of online teaching, students were interacting with ~ 2 major journal articles/unit. The COVID-19 Pandemic has made available a tremendous amount of literature for my students. The current online version of the class is closely following the race towards the development of a vaccine, and as one would imagine, deep reading of these articles has become a huge priority. Thus, the literacy skills mentioned above are even more important during this phase. To address this, I have been linking articles IN a Google Form, and using the "Get Pre-Filled Link" option to force students into a summary template scaffold that I will eventually begin to pull back. I wrote more about this feature here. See screenshot below. The above format has been working great. Then I stumbled across a site called "Newsela" that provides curated articles that can be formatted for various reading levels and also embed quizzes and writing prompts to promote literacy. I actually learned about this through my 5th grade daughter who's teacher as leveraging Newsela beautifully. Given the need for the added literacy scaffolds above, I found a Newsela article on vaccine development, tailored it for my student's reading level, and pushed it out to them in today's "Check Out" form here, which includes this instructional video. I crossed my fingers. Once students finished today's lesson (about 30 minutes ago), I visited the Newsela dashboard which is really slick! I was shocked to see that my students, who are all "Honors" level did very poorly on the quiz. Below is a screenshot snippet of their progress as seen on the teacher dashboard. Shortly after checking all student scores I received the below email from a student. This student is one of the brightest and most thoughtful students I have EVER taught. This is my 20th year in the classroom. I very much appreciate this email! Not because it provided a review of Newsela (which I may still use if appropriate), but because it forced me to continue to reflect on what it means to help students develop literacy, and the true role that technology can play in that process. I will be sure to share any updates on use of Newsela in my class as I still feel it can be a valuable tool for article interaction and reflection.
As discussed here, students in my Engineering class are participating in a "Hackathon" designing solutions to various needs that have surfaced during the COVID 19 pandemic. Over the weekend students completed this assignment to begin getting initial ideas on paper through a lens of the area they are trying to serve.
During today's class I wanted students to share their ideas visually and comment on one another's. I have been really vocal in this blog about trying to limit the amount of technology I am using. That being said, after spending a few hours reflecting on the best pedagogical move for sharing and commenting on student ideas, Padlet surfaced. I was initially planning on using a Google Doc with tables for commenting, but the ability to see one another's comments simultaneously, "like" posts, and visually see images and descriptions created a nice aesthetic that made the sharing process more seamless. Click here (and see embed below) the Padlet that my students are currently collaborating on at this very moment! I am hopeful that many of these ideas will come to life... Sitting here grading work from "Day 1" before students "show up" for Day 2. A simple post to say how much I LOVE the ability for students to turn in images, files, etc., through Google Forms. If they are logged into their account it makes it an easy "drop box" for work.
This is particularly useful as I want students to do work on hard copies at home, but turn in to me in a systematic, and organized way. It also keeps the system locked into Google Forms, which keeps with my goal of simplifying resources. Click here for an instructional video on how to use this feature and see images from my grading process below today. I will be using student images as a catalyst for instructional videos next week as they provide great ways to discuss student misconceptions, etc. |
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