How to maintain best practice when teaching remotely

The nature of education is a continually changing landscape and over the years the way it has been delivered should be altering significantly. Sometimes these changes are driven by education research and sometimes they are driven by societal or business influences. Currently many schools across the world are facing a marked shift in how they deliver their curriculums – driven by an outbreak of the coronavirus. This has forced many schools to suddenly shift to delivering their learning in a completely online, virtual world – something that has previously been a foreign concept for many teachers, and their learners.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently as I’ve read about the experiences that many people are sharing on forums such as Twitter and Facebook. And I’ve been thinking about how what they are sharing not only applies to this relatively new way of teaching, but how it also applies to what we should all be thinking about when it comes to good teaching practices in a digital age.

[bctt tweet=”What constitutes best practice when teaching remotely? #edtech #edchat #teaching #utbPD”]
If this way of teaching is new to you, or you are in a school that has closed its doors for a few weeks and you’re now delivering learning completely online, here are a few ideas to help you maximise your delivery….

Set clear boundaries and provide a structure for your students

Just as you would if your students were in a physical classroom with you, set the boundaries within which you expect your students to work. We all need some structure in our lives, and if your learners and their families clearly understand what this will be from the beginning, it will be easier for everyone to work together collaboratively.

Let your students and their families know the time frames that you will be online and set a time when you can all meet as a class. This will of course differ depending on the age of your students, but having clear expectations from the start will help everyone make the adjustments.

Also set clear expectations around the completion of work – just as you would in your physical classroom. By using awesome tools like Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom you are able to add due dates to the work you assign students. This helps them to stay organised with their tasks and to know when work needs to be completed by.

[bctt tweet=”Set due dates on tasks to help Ss organise themselves #GoogleClassroom #MicrosoftTeams”]
Be proactive in following up on students who fall behind – just as you would in your normal classroom practice.

Make the learning outcomes clear for your students

All too often I’ve seen teachers write a learning intention or learning objective on the board or across the top of a task – that has then been all but ignored by the students. To be worthy of the students paying any attention to them, intentions or objectives need to be discussed before the task and in consultation or in discussion with the students.

Quite often I would give nothing at the beginning of the task, and then ask the students, once they’d started, what they were learning – and then construct the desired outcome with them.

Most importantly – whatever term you use to name it – to be of value to your students, it should be about the learning and skills, not about the task.


__________________________________

1 Mahajan, Mrunal & Sarjit Singh, Manvender Kaur. (2017). Importance and Benefits of Learning Outcomes. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science. 22. 65-67. 10.9790/0837-2203056567.

[bctt tweet=”Learning objectives should be about skills & learning- not tasks #edchat #utbPD!”]
Here a few ideas to think about:

Of course it goes without saying that the learning needs to continue to be meeting your normal curriculum expectations.

Give your students prompt and relevant feedback

I really love this graphic from the Cult of Pedagogy blog that clearly shows the differences between feedback and feedforward. We should always be striving to grow our students and when they are working remotely we need to think about how we could do this as efficiently as we do when we are physically in the class with them.


Google Classroom has a great feature for giving feedback promptly to students, including the ability to give private comments that only a particular student can see. You can also give students feedback and feedforward easily in Microsoft Teams by using the assignment feature.

Other tools that you could use are:

  • Flipgrid: This lets you, or other students, quickly record a video to give feedback or feedforward on students thinking
  • Seesaw: The recording tool in Seesaw is a great asset – you can quickly record your voice to leave a comment on students’ work.
  • Book Creator: Has a voice recording tool that could be used to give students feedback.
  • iPad screen recorder: the screen recording function on an iPad is perfect for this also

The tool that you use is not the important thing – what is vitally important is the quality of the comments you leave for your students. Utilising video or voice recording tools help you to maintain that connection and relationship with your students. So even if your students are not remote learning at the moment you might consider giving it go as well.

Make the learning authentic

Finally, make the learning engaging and real – just as you would if your students were in your physical classroom.

Teachers are on a steep learning curve in how to use digital tools purposefully and meaningfully in a way that does more than just encourage students to consume digital content. But this idea of simply not consuming, but creating, digital content should be standard practice in any classroom.

Just because your students are working digitally doesn’t mean they should be asked to complete loads of digital worksheets.

[bctt tweet=”No matter how you’re delivering learning it needs to be #authentic and #relevant #edchat #utbPD!”]
The tasks you give your students need to encourage them to interact with their peers – it’s super easy to collaborate on Google tools as it is on Microsoft tools that are shared online. These situations are also a fabulous opportunity to reinforce digital citizenship and netiquette with all of your students. UTB has some great blogs on redesigning digital tasks here, but as you would in your day to day practice, keep the learning authentic to your students needs.

Of course – it’s just as important to look after your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your students throughout these times. I’m going to leave you with this lovely tweet from Sonya terBorg @terSonya

For more ideas on efficient digital workflow in remote situations read Adrian’s blog Protecting your workflow from the Coronavirus and natural disasters by utilising Microsoft Teams.

 

Related Post

How well do you use the
Apple Apps Google Workspace Microsoft 365
tools in your workplace?

Find out if you’re working with the tools OR if you’ve got the
tools working for you.

What Industry Are You In?

Using Apple Apps, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

What Type of user are you?

🫣 Entry User | 🤹 Skilled User | 👑 Elite User

Take the quiz to find out. 

Privacy Policy

Using Technology Better Privacy Commitment

Introduction

We hold the privacy of your personal information in the highest regard.

Using Technology Better regards customer privacy as an important part of our relationship with our customers. The following privacy policy applies to all Using Technology Better users, and conforms to Internet privacy standards.

This policy will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our customers’ needs.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact the support team on our Contact Us Page.

Collection of Information

In order to use the Using Technology Better website, we may require information from you in order to provide the best service possible.

All correspondence may also be collected and stored, particularly in regard to sales, support and accounts, including Email.

Any information collected by Using Technology Better is collected via correspondence from you or your company. This may be via the telephone, Email, mail, fax or directly through our website.

Visitors and customers of japan.usingtechnologybetter.com will have their information shared back to DAIWABO INFORMATION SYSTEM CO., LTD. and DIS Service & Solution Co., Ltd.

Use of Collection Information

Any details collected from Using Technology Better customers is required in order to provide you with our

products and/or services, and a high level of customer service.

Correspondence is recorded in order to provide service references, and to assist in our staff development.

Web Site Use Information

Similar to other commercial Web sites, our Web sites utilize a standard technology called “cookies” (see explanation below, “What Are Cookies?”) and web server log files to collect information about how our Web site is used.

Information gathered through cookies and Web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web site.

Storage of Collected Information

The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) on our website, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

When Credit Card details are collected, we simply pass them on in order to be processed as required. We never permanently store complete Credit Card details.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

If you have any questions about security on our Website, you can email us at <ContactEmail>.

Access to Collected Information

If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate it by emailing us at <ContactEmail>.

Orders

If you purchase a product or service from us, we may request certain personally identifiable information from you.

You may be required to provide contact information such as:

Name

Email

Postal address

Your school or organisation

Financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date, name on card, card billing address).

We use this information for billing purposes and to fill your orders. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact you.

Communications

Using Technology Better uses personally identifiable information for essential communications, such as

Emails

Accounts information

Critical service details.

We may also use this information for other purposes, including some promotional Emails.

If at any time a customer wishes not to receive such correspondence, they can request to be removed from any mailing lists by contacting support.

You will be notified when your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

Third Parties

Using Technology Better may at its discretion use other third parties to provide essential services on our site or for our business processes.

We may share your details as necessary for the third party to provide that service.

These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Using Technology Better does not share any information with third parties for any unknown or unrelated uses.

What Are Cookies?

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a Web site, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies.

Each Web site can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a Web site to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

Browsers are usually set to accept cookies. However, if you would prefer not to receive cookies, you may alter the configuration of your browser to refuse cookies.

If you choose to have your browser refuse cookies, it is possible that some areas of our site will not function as effectively when viewed by the users.

A cookie cannot retrieve any other data from your hard drive or pass on computer viruses.

How Do We Use Information We Collect from Cookies?

As you visit and browse our Web site, the site uses cookies to differentiate you from other users. In some cases, we also use cookies to prevent you from having to log in more than is necessary for security.

Cookies, in conjunction with our Web server’s log files, allow us to calculate the aggregate number of people visiting our Web site and which parts of the site are most popular. This helps us gather feedback to constantly improve our Web site and better serve our clients.

Cookies do not allow us to gather any personal information about you and we do not intentionally store any personal information that your browser provided to us in your cookies.

Legal

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Website.

Links

Links on the Using Technology Better site to external entities are not covered within this policy. The terms and conditions set out in this privacy statement only cover the domain name of usingtechnologybetter.com

Changes to Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it periodically. If we make material changes to this policy, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this Privacy Policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this Privacy Policy, without your prior consent

Delivery Policy

Most goods are digitally delivered instantly via email.  Our services may be delivered either via an online medium or live in person.

For our online delivery see below.  For services delivered live onsite, please refer to our speaker agreement form which is emailed to you on confirmation of booking.

Refund Policy

We do not offer refunds or returns unless we cannot supply goods or services or the goods or services are not delivered as promised.

Australian law is the governing body for all work, goods and services supplied by Using Technology Better.

Marketing Release

Using Technology Better (UTB) may film, record, and photograph me (the results of which are the “Recordings”). UTB may also incorporate into any production(s) any separate content (e.g., quotes, testimonials, biographical information, profiles, photos, videos, sound recordings, artwork, etc.) I provide to UTB or approve in writing (“Materials”).

1.License

I grant to UTB an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to, in its sole discretion, (i) edit, translate, and modify the Recordings and the Materials, (ii) attribute the Recordings and Materials to me by my name, age, and city and state of residence, (iii) incorporate the Recordings and the Materials into content to promote UTB, its programs, or products (“Content”), and (iv) publicly use, distribute, reproduce, create derivative works from, and perform/display the Content, and any excerpts thereof, in any language.

2. No Compensation.

I grant this permission without any financial or other obligation of any nature.

 

For any issues or concerns please contact us