Add a Little Sparkle into your Online Teaching- Ideas Worth Sharing
It is amazing the way educators around the globe are extending themselves and creating novel solutions to ensure student engagement along with addressing the preferred learning modes of their students.
This blog shares some simple doable ideas from around the globe to enhance the online learning practice across schools.
The key is to keep it simple to avoid burnout.
Sharing content in multiple formats:
Share content in editable format for students to annotate , and add reference links. These could be word/ or editable pdf/ or Powerpoints.
Videos and podcasts enhance the impact of the content and complement the written content.
A few practical tips for creating videos:
You don’t have to be a tech expert or have done a course in videography for this. All you need to do is keep a few simple do’s and don’ts in mind.
1. Ensure your voice is neither too soft nor too loud, practice the pace of narration. Keep the narration as comfortable as you would in a in person class, ensuring that the pauses are just enough to give a minute break but not too long for students to wonder if there is more.
2. Do not put all content in one video-make bite sized videos and chunk them under the main topic.
This is a great example of how an art teacher created simple videos for her students https://twitter.com/i/status/1244654735996657665 .
3. Narrated Powerpoints- If you want to create a video with written text, go for a simple PPt, convert it into a video and share.
4. Keep the video lively, but not too chatty.
5. Practise the script over and over again, always go over the first cut to get a sense of what needs to be refined further.
6. Believe in your abilities but do watch videos of s few top performers to understand how you can continuously better your craft.
Ideas Worth Sharing
Here is a list of websites that offer simple doable ideas to refer to for taking teaching a notch higher
Ice Breakers- https://sites.google.com/site/onlineteachingstrategies/resources-1/organizations
http://www.mrswillyerd.com/2015/08/10-back-to-school-ice-breakers-your.html
Engaging online Learning
https://www.dexway.com/how-to-build-strong-student-engagement-in-a-virtual-classroom/
Group work https://www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/best-student-collaboration-tools
Safe platforms for online collaboration
http://web.ccsd.k12.wy.us/sectechcurr/sectechcurr/Online_Collaboration.html