On Thursday March 19, 2020, I sent this email. My students have left campus and will be learning remotely until the governor reopens the schools. Hello Tech in Ed Students, I hope that you are all settling into a good routine and that your loved ones are well. I am now home with my family which includes 3 college students who are learning online... I get to see the student side of this experience, even as I prepare for it as a professor. These next few weeks will be an important time in educational history and you and I are a part of it. Next week, we start Tech in Ed. This course starts with the backstory of technology in Education and then becomes very hands-on with technology. If you do not have access to a computer with internet connection, please contact me. In 3 days, my Technology in Education students will either show up in my Zoom room at 8:30AM and 12:30PM or choose to watch the pre-recorded lessons. This blog is a journal of my experiences as an instructor a...
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Week 4
The Business Department at my university has been sponsoring 1 hour trainings for local teachers on topics related to Emergency Remote Teaching. I was thankful to have the opportunity to present this week on one of my favorite tech tools, Flipgrid, for asynchronous video presentations. We had 40 teachers in attendance K-12 from a variety of subject areas. The other presenter is one of my favorite educators, and not just because she has a great british accent. She is energetic and her topic at this week's presentation was a great example, the superhero within us. The session went well. In hindsight, it would have been useful to have some procedures in place to monitor chat questions, but we were able to mutually support each other spontaneously. I am impressed that the Business Department is able to give ACT 48 for their events. It really shows care for the local teachers who have to constantly be chasing these credits. I submitted an application in February to be allowed to do...
Class 5, Week 3
I just finished reading Hope in the Time of a Health Crisis , a blog by another educator and member of ISTE (Int'l Soc. for Tech in Ed). I love the "poster" he created that states, "Teachers: Some people just want to see the world learn". He reminds us that most people are really doing the very best that they can. I would add that it is OK when we don't have it "all together." Yesterday, I taught class number 5 on presentation tools for the classroom (Gynzy, Nearpod, Pear Deck), but what really stood out to me was the extended "Check-in" time before my 8:30AM class. One of my students told us about returning to work 2 days a week to help a restaurant with the take-out orders. I broached a subject that I hoped would be helpful to all, "Have any of you seen someone wearing a mask or worn one yourself? How did that make you feel?" "Surreal.""Like I am in a movie." My student who works in a restaurant to...
The Final Project
Although we are in week 2 of 6 weeks of Technology in Education, I spent the day remaking the assignment for my students' final project. Usually we work together in a project based environment to create a Teacher Tech Handbook with summaries of the latest tech tools. This handbook is then sent out to local teachers for free and under a creative commons license so that they can adapt any student made worksheets to their needs. My fall students completed a pretty robust text and this spring I thought my students would be making videos about how to integrate these technologies for various content areas and grades. In light of the current COVID-19 education experiment, I have been thinking of alternatives. "Lend a Hand" <-- This is one of the options my students can choose from. I am asking them to find someone who could benefit from their new tech knowledge. Their only parameter is to use a minimum of 2 tech tools, Screencastify mixed with Google Sites for example. I ...
TGIF
Class 2 went great and assignments are flooding into Blackboard. Students occasionally send emails to get clarification and my live lectures were attended by 3 to 7 students each (most are choosing the pre-recorded lectures). The number of questions asked increased a little as they got used to Zoom. After my second class, I attended one session of a three day conference on Best Practices in Education. This wouldn't be unusual except that I attended in a virtual world called Second Life. I got the invite to the free conference through ISTE (International Society for Technology Education). This is their 13th conference hosted in a virtual world. The experience was amazing. To attend, I had to create an account and an avatar. Much to the dismay of my motion designer son, I chose one that looked like me. He thought a vampire or fairy would be better. I did invest a little time making her outfit look more like me and the experience was rough, but she looks OK. I entered the world,...
Class #1
Prepping the recorded version of the lesson that I did live today It is 5PM on the first day of my online classes for Tech in Ed. From my standing desk in my bedroom, I taught 3 hours of live lessons (1.5 per section). These lessons were also provided as pre-recorded lessons on Blackboard, our university's LMS. Of my 33 students, 12 attended the live lectures (6 at 8:30AM and 6 at 12:30PM). I loved having the students in "class" and appreciated their questions and hearing about their experiences this past week. I asked about personal struggles as we are all in various degrees of quarantine. I heard about the camaraderie between parents and college students, both negotiating work/study and home life with younger children running around. One of my students lives in NYC, which currently has 1/2 of the CORVID-19 cases in the USA. My student went to the office of a relative to retrieve materials when the relative was afraid. Another noted her fears about group project...
Ready.Gov
Ready.gov I passed the billboard about 200 times this year on my way to work and often thought about going to the site to fill out whatever form awaits us. The sign says it helps families prepare for emergencies. Now that both of my kids are home from college, along with a third college student, and there are no restaurants for eating out and TJ Maxx is closed... I wonder about the Ready.gov site. I will probably visit soon. I have spent the last week converting my face to face lessons to online lessons. This morning I got up and started planning how I could do my Sunday School lessons online. I feel fortunate that my work is allowed to continue when so many people can't go to their jobs. Not only can I work from home, but the prospect of preparing a course on Educational Technology in a period of "emergency remote teaching" is (sorry to say it) exciting... and riddled with anxiety. Like everyone in my profession, I am analyzing my syllabus to see how my objectives c...