Lacey: Download Vs. Streaming, Sans Serif Fonts, Standardized Student Passwords — 10 Things To Know When Converting To An Online Classroom

Lacey: Download vs. Streaming, Sans Serif Fonts, Standardized Student Passwords — 10 Things to Know When Converting to an Online Classroom

Educators at all levels and across various fields are suddenly faced with the task of providing online instruction to their students in a fast and efficient manner. Below are some guidelines to help adapt to this new educational normal, which we hope is temporary.

Conduct a connectivity assessment:

– Determine what devices your students will primarily use (laptops, tablets, desktop computers, or phones) and tailor your lessons accordingly.

– Find out what digital tools are already available to you. Does your school have a learning management system or a videoconferencing platform in place? Will you have access to additional devices, specialized software, or technical support?

– Once you have identified the platform you plan to use, take the time to familiarize yourself with it.

Find a technology mentor:

– If online instruction is new to you, seek guidance from experienced teachers. Asking questions and learning from those you know is the most effective and efficient way to acquire new technology skills.

Establish standardized logins and passwords:

– Implement a consistent naming convention for all students, such as "firstname.lastname."

– Encourage students to structure their passwords in the same way to make them easier to manage. Using passphrases, such as "ilovealgebra," can be more memorable than traditional passwords. Enhance the security of these passphrases by incorporating punctuation, numbers, and capitalized letters, for example, "Ilovealgebra20!"

– Keep a record of student usernames and passwords to assist those who may forget or misplace them.

Consider bandwidth limitations:

– Not everyone has access to high-speed internet. Even for those who do, increased internet traffic in a given area can slow down connection speeds.

– To mitigate this issue, avoid relying solely on live instruction, especially with streaming videos. Buffering can disrupt the learning experience when bandwidth is limited.

– Save live lessons and make them available for students to watch when they have sufficient bandwidth, or allow them to download the lessons for later viewing.

Offer self-paced lessons:

– Recognize that families may have multiple children at home, all attempting to keep up with their schoolwork through online learning.

– Self-paced lessons are an excellent option. These can be as simple as assignments in Google Docs or, if you have access to authoring tools like Articulate 360, Elucidat, or CourseArc, you can create engaging self-paced lessons with interactive activities.

– Regardless of the approach, it is crucial to ensure that self-paced lessons are engaging, authentic, and relevant to maximize student participation and learning.

Clearly define objectives and expectations:

– When delivering online lessons, students should have a clear understanding of the following:

– What they will be learning.

– What activities they will be engaged in.

– What resources they need to accompany the lesson.

Ensure accessibility:

– It is essential to make e-learning content accessible to all students.

– Use a sans-serif font for improved readability. Provide closed captioning or transcripts for videos. Use alt-text to describe images for visually impaired students.

– Some e-learning software programs automatically incorporate these accessibility features. Take advantage of special deals offered by companies during this health crisis to find software that meets your accessibility needs.

Keep lessons engaging:

– Recognize that prolonged screen time, solely reading text, can be challenging.

– Remember that software is an interactive medium, and capitalize on this when creating online lessons.

– Break the content into smaller, more manageable chunks.

– Provide interactive activities for students to complete after each chunk.

– Aim for variety in the length and format of each segment.

– Utilize interactive tools like Quizlet, OpenBoard, Projeqt, and Kahoot! to create flashcards, interactive graphs, discussion boards, and more.

Gamify the learning experience:

– Whenever possible, make online learning enjoyable for students without requiring expensive programming. Exercise creativity.

– Design lessons as a series of challenges with increasing mastery levels, encouraging students to become "online learning champions."

– Assign online scavenger hunts, challenging students to gather as many facts as possible on a given topic. Increase the difficulty by requiring facts that start with each letter from A to Z.

– Engage students in role-playing exercises, like writing about pollution from the perspective of a bird.

Personalize the instruction:

– Incorporate student voices into your instruction as much as possible.

– If conducting live instruction with a chat feature, prompt students to ask questions or respond to prompts.

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