Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

As remote teaching and learning become more common–if not the standard in many places over the next six months–I thought it might be useful to offer some remote teaching tips to engage students in distance learning.

 

As with all content, how useful and relevant any of these are depends on your context–experience, grade level, need, priorities and strengths as a teacher, etc. Some are possibly too general to help (e.g., ‘Simplify’), but hopefully out of the 25 remote teaching tips below, one or two might stick and make your planning a little easier–and more engaging for students.

““What’s the one piece of advice you’d give educators leading emerging blended-learning programs?” is among the set of questions we ask educators on school profiles in the BLU directory—and it often yields the most interesting responses. With 2019 underway, if you’re an educator reading this blog, chances are you’re kicking off a new blended practice or working on fine-tuning an existing program. Fortunately, there’s no need reinvent the wheel. Here are some of the meatiest nuggets of wisdom offered in 2018 by experienced blended-learning implementers on the BLU.

A 2015 survey of Faculty Focus readers found that the number one barrier preventing faculty from implementing the flipped classroom model and other active learning experiences into their courses is TIME. Faculty reported they don’t have time to plan extra learner-centered activities, due to increasing responsibilities, and they don’t have time to implement the activities in class because there’s too much content to cover.

One of the key questions that faces you as you make your transition to online education is that of resources. In order to make the best of your online teaching/learning experience, you will need to have access to the right materials that can help facilitate this transition. EdTech and mLearning's distance learning section has some good suggestions to start with.

The term “microaggression” was coined in 1970 to name relatively slight, subtle, and often unintentional offenses that cause harm (Pierce, 1970). Since then, a substantial body of research on microaggressions has demonstrated their prevalence and harmful effects (Boysen, 2012; Solorzan, et. al., 2010; Suárez-Orozco, et. al., 2015; Sue, 2010).

Whether an observer, the target, or the unintentional perpetrator of microaggressions, faculty often don’t know how to respond to them in the moment. We may feel frozen (if the observer) or defensive (if the target or perpetrator). How we respond can shift the communication climate from supportive to defensive, which can have an adverse effect on student learning and comfort (Dallimore, et al, 2005; Souza, et al, 2010). Despite the feelings of paralysis or reactivity that tend to emerge in response to microaggressions in the classroom, certain practices can be implemented to increase the likelihood of maintaining a supportive climate.

Teaching is hard.

And because it’s so important, we push ourselves–and are pushed by others–to be as close as we can be to perfect.

In public education, defined in terms and standards that it defines and measures itself by, perfect teaching means bringing every child to master every academic standard, then to be able to prove that mastery on a government-designed test.