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TCEA Responds: Remote Teaching for Speech Therapists

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Dear TCEA Responds:

Speech teachers are struggling to use remote learning to meet student needs. They have several priorities, including keeping their caseload confidential, as well as sending and receiving assignments. Each student requires individualized plans. Our district wants us using G Suite EDU tools, but Classroom isn’t working for us.

Is there any advice, app, or program that you can think of that would help with this situation? We have asked several districts, but everyone does their own thing. I would appreciate any direction you can provide.

Thanks, Teresa

Dear Teresa:

Thank you for sharing this question. While I’ll take a stab at responding, I hope TCEA Technotes blog readers will as well.

Clarifying the Challenges

In reading your email, I see you’re facing several challenges. Allow me to summarize them as I understand them:

Challenge #1: Confidentiality

You need remote teaching resources that protect confidentiality of student-teacher interactions. Solutions like Google Classroom fail the test. Speech therapists/teachers have needs for confidentiality that exceed Google Classroom. Is that right?

Wondering how to approach Special Education in remote learning and remote teaching ? Sign up for TCEA’s Special Needs Educator online course.

Challenge #2: Individual Interactions

You need to be able to manage a large number of students per speech therapist where every interaction is confidential. How do you put 80 students in one digital class without sacrificing confidentiality? Or communicate with each student in a separate virtual space?

Challenge #3: Participation

Participation is low when speech therapists rely on teachers’ websites. To me, it sounds like you want your own space. The only issue is, participation may or may not suffer.

Let’s take a look at two possible solutions.

Rounding Up a Few Solutions

Finding the right answer to a multi-headed problem can be tough. As you guessed, there is no one perfect solution that combines all those components. Here are two possible solutions you may want to consider.

Option #1: Seesaw for Schools

You could use a solution like Seesaw. Wait, I know what you’re thinking…”Seesaw? That’s for little kids, right?” Actually, it’s not only for young children; Seesaw works well with older students, too. Districts use it for professional development for adult learners. In fact, I use it with adults at many of my workshops without any problems.

Let’s review a few relevant points:

  • Seesaw offers excellent audio/video recording support across devices.
  • Seesaw keeps teacher-student interactions to one on one. Using it enables you to set up individualized groups so that each group could focus on specific students. What’s more, Seesaw makes interactions confidential by default.
  • Seesaw works on all sorts of devices. This includes iPads, iPhones, and Android phones and tablets. It also works with Amazon Fire, Chromebooks, and Windows/Mac computers.
  • Seesaw is free for educators. Many of the features you need exist in the free version (Seesaw Basic). If you wanted more, you could always get Seesaw for Schools. To assist you with the options, check the chart below.

tcea responds

Need to learn Seesaw? TCEA offers a $29 Seesaw Educator online, self-paced course. You get to learn from brilliant course developer Brittany Beaird. You also receive 12 hours of CPE credit, a digital badge, and a certificate. And, if you’re not already a TCEA member, you get a complimentary one year membership ($49 value). Learn more online at Seesaw Educator.

Seesaw is one of my favorite digital tools. It ranks up there as one of the best solutions to teaching and learning available.

Option #2: OneNote and Flipgrid

You mentioned you were using G Suite EDU. If you have access to Microsoft 365, that presents another option. You could set yourself and your speech teachers up to use OneNote and Flipgrid.

OneNote Class Notebooks can be password protected and assigned to individual students. You can embed Flipgrid Topics for each student, securing them with a password.

Those are two possible options. I didn’t mention G Suite EDU since it appears that solution is one you’ve considered already. I would go with Seesaw as the best option.

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remote teaching
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Five Resources to Help with Remote Teaching

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Remote teaching has its challenges. Though you may be able to tweak many of your classroom lessons to work in a remote learning situation, you may discover that the learning activities have to be completely rethought.

Here are several resources for ideas and support as you look to make learning for your students meaningful and fun without driving their parents crazy.

TCEA Community – Remote Learning Resources

The Remote Learning Resources group is focused on resources, ideas, and solutions for enhancing student engagement in digital learning. Share best teaching practices, websites, apps, tools, and creative ideas for helping students to learn with technology. Access to this online community does require TCEA membership. Other Community groups include Student Engagement, Ask Your Fellow Techsperts, STEM, and Robotics, as well as others.

COVID-19 Parent/Teacher Learning Resources (SplashCircle)

The Parent/Teacher Learning Resources group is a Facebook group that has lots of ideas and support to help teachers and parents manage the shift to remote learning. You’ll find answers to questions, learning resources lists, daily schedules, interesting links, tips, and updates related to PreK-5 learning.

Educator, Parent, and Caregiver Resources

Cartoon image of owl and books

The Ohio Department of Education has provided a nicely categorized set of Parent and Caregiver Resources to help support engaging students in learning during the school building closure period. A separate but equally organized set of Educator Resources is also provided. Consider exploring both lists for helpful ideas and activities.

Scholastic Learn at Home

Scholastic Learn at Home contains four weeks of activities to help your child with day-to-day activities to foster reading, learning, and growing. Besides the grade-level grouped resources, you will also find a section for families, teachers, and tips and tricks.

Teaching Ideas Group

The Teaching ideas is a closed group on Facebook and averages about 75 posts a day. Even if you don’t post, be sure to look through what others are asking and the resources shared. If you are a “specialty” teacher, then here are some groups that may be a better fit for you: Teaching Theatre thru Remote Learning, K-12 Art Teacher Group, Teaching Choir Remotely, Early Years Remote Learning, and Remote ASL Teaching.

What other resources would you add to this list? Be sure to let us know in the comments below. We look forward to hearing from you.

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transactional distance theory
Educational Trends

Remote Teaching: Transactional Distance Theory and Dialogue

by Tiffany Barton, Guest Author
written by Tiffany Barton, Guest Author

I absolutely, not once, never-ever-ever desired to be an online teacher. I would be willing to bet 95% of you reading this did not have this dream either! 

Plot Twist: During this unprecedented, history-making, social-distancing, self-isolating, unbelievable and incomprehensible health crisis, we have all become online teachers.  If I didn’t laugh, I would cry.  But as we’ll explore, Transactional Distance Theory may help us identify tools and techniques that can improve our remote teaching and learning.

My Story

My job over the last four weeks has been to drag, push, and shove my staff – I mean prepare them – for a quick and efficient dive into the pool of online learning.  And once we were all in the water, my job was to cheer them on to mastering the “deep end” of the pool, or to help them back to the shallow end where they could stand up. Many of them actually jumped in with both feet and swam off into total success.  I threw a few floaties at them and they waved “bye!” Additionally, there were a few who were so excited to swim into the deep end that they ran into a few issues like “zoom-bombing” and an adolescent’s idea of a funny virtual background.

But I am sure my teaching story is not that different from many of you. Throughout my teaching career, I have focused on good pedagogy for my content area and for the age group that I serve. And most importantly, I have perfected my “teacher look” that will squash any misbehavior in the back of the room without a word spoken.  

Finding Something New

However, now that I am teaching from home, I find my bag of tricks not to be as useful. My “teacher look” doesn’t really work on the dog, and not all teaching methods that work inside the four walls of a classroom are applicable to online learning. I found myself needing some new tools and techniques in my teaching bag that would work in this abnormal environment.

Mostly, though, we have settled into a basic routine, and the students are responding.  I started to notice right away, though, that if the students did not answer my emails or show up to my online webinar meetings, their work tended to slack off for the week.  The work was incomplete, or it seemed hurried and rushed, definitely not meeting my in-class expectations. But we are not in class, are we?

I immediately began researching distance learning. 

Transactional Distance Theory

I read about Transactional Distance Theory about a year ago in a graduate class.  At the time, I just filed it under “more educational theory,” but now, this was exactly what I was looking for to explain my situation.

Michael G. Moore proposed Transactional Distance Theory in 1973. It is a way of analyzing the interactions between learner and instructor in both space and time.  Moore suggests that separation in distance learning is not just physical, but “a psychological and communications space to be crossed, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner.”

This psychological and communications distance could be fatal to our goal of continuing to educate students during school shutdowns.

Keeping Students Engaged

I believe that as the ed tech community, we have more tools than anyone to help the educational body at large continue to advance student learning. And with this theory in hand, we can continue this endeavor, no matter the circumstances. 

All teachers know what happens to the student who sits in the back of the class. If we are not diligent in keeping them engaged, this student will travel to a far-away distant place where there are no teachers and no assignments.

The student who “distances” himself or herself from the teacher within the walls of a classroom can easily be guided back on task just by standing beside their desk or involving them in the conversation. They know their teacher is watching and will not ignore them.

Figure 1: Transactional Distance can occur in any situation

However, what about the student who joins the online webinar, leaves his camera off, and goes back to bed? I can’t walk up to his bed and gently whisper that he needs to pay attention. There are ways, however, using TDT, that I can keep this student connected to his classwork, his classmates, and me.

Our goal in this online learning situation is to keep the Transactional Distance to a minimum – to keep students connected.  Using a model of TDT can help us achieve that. Moore suggested that there are three main variables in a distance-learning situation – Dialogue, Structure, and Autonomy.  Less of one variable means more dependence on the others. 

Figure 2: Three parts of Transactional Distance – Dialogue, Structure, and Autonomy

Moore developed his theory in the beginning of Distance Learning, when the few tools instructors had access to included the telephone and videos that students had to watch on their own. Thanks to today’s educational technology, we have a multitude of tools we can employ to keep students engaged and connected. And with Transactional Distance Theory, we can target which tools to use and share with others that will influence student learning the most during this difficult time.

Transactional Distance Theory and Dialogue

Dialogue between teacher and learner are key to staying connected to a student. If you do not talk to them, how will they ever know what your expectations are or what they should be learning? In our current situation, however, teachers do not have nearly enough of this commodity. 

By examining the TDT model, you can see that as the opportunities for dialogue shrink, the distance between the learner and instructor grows, and thus, the student’s academic achievement can become more difficult. He will have to rely on his own independence to understand what to do and how to do it. Personally, I know several middle school students that have yet to master this set of skills.  

via GIPHY

Figure 3 – Dialogue Shrinks. As Dialogue decreases, the distance between learner and instructor increase.

Online learning pushes students away from us. It is hard to stay connected when we can only talk to them through email, or worse, through paper instructions when they do not have internet at home.

A Few Tools

Fortunately, we have so many resources available to message, converse, and give feedback to students.  Here are a few tools and strategies that we can use to increase dialogue and decrease distance:

  • Check-in with students frequently – Use Remind or another messaging tool to send messages to students daily or a few times a week. Ask students to respond with an emoji to let you know how they are doing. Responses don’t have to be elaborate, but knowing that you are a text message away decreases the transactional distance significantly. For Remind,iIf you turn on replies, students can even ask for help when needed. This type of communication recreates what they are already familiar with and increases your chance of connecting with them and their families.
  • Give personal feedback –  Students will feel closer to you when your feedback is personal and meaningful. “Zach, I really like the way you organized this poem,” carries more significance than “Great job.”   
  • Use screen recording software – Give personal feedback so that students can observe facial expressions and hear meaning in your voice. Use the Moderated Posts setting on Flipgrid to converse with students one-on-one. If the posts are not public to the entire class, students might feel more open to discuss issues with you. You could also use Screencastify or Screen-cast-o-matic to record feedback and then share the link to your personal message with the student.
  • Require responses – When you email or message students or families, ask open-ended questions. “How are you managing your family sharing devices?” or “What is one piece of advice you could give to your classmates during this chaotic time?” Any way that you can connect with students or families is beneficial, even if it is not about schoolwork.
  • Use humor and emotion– Leverage your relationship with your students to bring them closer to you. Remind students of happy or memorable things that happened in the classroom earlier in the year. Include funny memes or pictures in your emails and messages. Be open and honest about how things are going for you during this time as well. Evoking emotional responses can create meaningful connections.

Two-Way Communication

Dialogue is two-way communication. When students are physically far away from teachers, we must create opportunities for this communication to continue.  Transactional Distance Theory would suggest that this dialogue is key to successful distance learning. In 2020, with all the technology tools available to us, we should be able to connect to our students in a multitude of ways, virtually keeping them closer to us than they actually are in reality.

How are you staying connected to your students? Share with me in the comments. I’m sure my teachers would love to hear other methods of staying afloat in the deep end of the pool! Some of the floaties I tossed them may be losing air. 

In the second part of this series, we will discuss the Structure and Autonomy variables of Transactional Distance Theory and tools we could use to manage them.

unsplash-logoPhoto: Sharon McCutcheon
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Three students looking at different graphs.
MathMathematicsReadingScienceScience

Resources for Teaching Graph Making and Analysis Skills

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

How can you better develop graph and chart analytical skills with your students? One way is to have them explore and analyze graphs, then discuss what they have learned and think. Another is to create graphs. Let’s take a look at some ways you can do that.

Check out this Google Slides deck of Graphs, Correlation, and Causation. It can assist in teaching about how graphs and statistics can be used to mislead, an appropriate lesson for secondary students.

How to Teach What Graphs Mean

See the quote below for a common problem in classrooms. As a student, this quote reflects my experience with graph skills. And, from a teacher’s perspective, this is spot-on:

Last year, students frustrated me. They could graph lines and do the math. But, they didn’t understand what the graphs and equations meant.

I saw this when they couldn’t tell if answers were reasonable. They also couldn’t explain the graphs beyond the basics.

I knew I needed to get them thinking deeper about what the graphs show. That way the numbers would mean more. I wanted complex problems for them to spend more time on, doing more with fewer problems. (adapted for readability from source: Rachel at Idea Galaxy)

So, how do you teach graph skills? What graphs mean? What they represent? My answer? Focus on having students create graphs based on data they collect. Let’s take a look at some alternate approaches for analyzing graphs. Then, we will explore some digital tools for making graphs.

Teaching Students Graph Analysis Skills

There are many ways to analyze graphs that follow an approach like the one below:

  • Read the title and make predictions about the graph.
  • Read the axes and the labels and ask, “How are these related?”
  • What is the relationship in the data and how does the data change?
  • What units of measurements did the designer use?
  • Study the data values to understand how big the differences shown are

Often, graph design is poor, and this affects students’ graph analysis skills. You have to work extra hard to ask questions that engage your mind. For some students, nothing pops into their mind when they look at a graph or chart, which makes teaching graph analysis and design important for critical thinking.

Guiding Questions for Graph Analysis Skills

Finally, I always dig into my back pocket for some questions. Here are a few that pop into my mind when I’m looking at a graph for the first time. They might be helpful when teaching students graph skills.

  • What kind of graph is being used to represent data?
  • Is that graph type the right one for the data? Why or why not?
  • What colors did the graph designer use and do they mean anything?
  • Why was this data chosen to present? What makes it special?
  • What are some reasons for the differences in the data?
  • What do I need to learn or understand better to see how and why this graph is important?
  • How do I know this data is valid and reliable?
  • What’s the proof or evidence?
  • What is meant by this data?
  • What does it symbolize?
  • What does it mean for me? For others?

It never hurts to equip students with questions they can ask. Building a habit of graph analysis and design is the next step.

Resources for Analyzing Graphs and Charts

Here are some resources that provide background knowledge for graph and chart analysis:

Tools for Making Graphs

Making graphs is one of my favorite ways to get students thinking and analyzing. I have a round up of five simple graphing tools you can explore, but here are two of my favorite graphing tools to teach graph making skills.

1. Kids’ Zone Create a Graph

NCES Kid's Zone Create a Graph activity page
Screenshot by the author: National Center for Education Statistics Kids’ Zone Create a Graph

This is one of my all time favorite graph creation tools. It’s easy to use via the web and works great on Chromebooks. It’s not too complicated! I’ve used it with third grade and sixth grade students.

2. Imgflip’s Chart Maker

Imgflip's Chart Maker page showing a pie chart being created.
Screenshot by the author: imgflip Chart Maker

This graph and chart-making tool is drop-dead easy. You can make pie, donut, or bar charts via your web browser. And you can change colors.

With those two powerful tools, you will have students designing graphs in no time. But wait, what kinds of graphs could you start with? What data sets could you use for teaching graph skills?

Additional Tools for Older Students:

Make Your Own Data Sets

Want to get students to graph data? Hands-on experiences and labs are one way to do that. You want students to recognize that graphable data surrounds them.

A student building a tower using marshmallows and wooden sticks.
Jason Kasper from Harrisburg, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, Homeschooler with Project via Wikimedia Commons

Here are some quick data sets and activities from various sources that can get your started with teaching graph analysis skills:

Graphs for Students to Analyze

Graphs and charts surround us. Let’s take a look at several graphs and charts you can use in the classroom.

1. Turner’s Graph of the Week (GOW)

A graph of the week activity example from Turner's Graph of the Week site.
Screenshot by Emily Horn: Turner’s Graph of the Week, 8/21 Weekend Box Office Sales in U.S.

Kelly Turner’s Graph of the Week website wants to help students become “lifelong critical and analytical thinkers.” They also hope to achieve the following:

  • Improve academic literacy
  • Develop students engaged in civics through oral discourse
  • Link mathematics to real-world situations
  • Develop students’ Habits of Mind
  • Improve written communication
  • Give students current events awareness

You will find a very long list with a variety of graphs to analyze for the current school year and in the 2013-last school year’s archive. Don’t be afraid to make your own! This is a great resource for teaching and reviewing graph analysis skills.

2. Using Graphs for Writing to Learn

This particular collection (view-only link) is available as a Google Doc of instructions (make-a-copy link). Find it via MiddleWeb‘s blog. It offers specific suggestions, such as:

  • Give the title of the graph.
  • Describe the picture/shape of graph.
  • Summarize the information given in the graph.
  • Give statistics and results included in the graph.
  • State the source of the information.
  • Give your opinion of the results.
  • Explain how the information relates to you or the world around you

Students then review a series of graphs and charts. They follow the instructions included to write about it. Then, as an extension activity, they create an infographic of their data. Great way to put graph anaylsis and making skills into practice! You can get some more ideas about infographics from these TechNotes articles.

3. Next Graphs + Charts

Next.cc's home page showing 8 activities and a gallery available.
Screenshot by Emily Horn: Next Graphs + Charts Home Page

This website encourages students to become graph graphic designers. With that goal in mind, you will find seven activities to assist you with teaching students graph design skills. A short list of the activities appears below:

  • Activity 1 – collect charts and graphs
  • Activity 2 – parts of graphs and charts
  • Activity 3 – direct a pie chart
  • Activity 4 – build a bar chart
  • Activity 5 – area graphs
  • Activity 6 – point plots
  • Activity 7 – variables
  • Activity 8 – identify and interpret

At the end, students can take a short quiz about key concepts. This is a valuable resource that provides a lot of great ideas and suggestions. The information is bite-sized, so your students won’t be overwhelmed with information.

What’s more, you will find pages of information on topics including area, coding, diagramming, grids, temperature, and more.

4. Problem-Attic

Program-Attic's home page, explaining the purpose of the site and site features.
Screenshot by Emily Horn: Problem-Attic Home Page

Looking for incredible graphs aligned to curricular concepts? Explore Problem-Attic. You get access to a question bank with 280,000 questions, and it offers many more features. One feature I like is you can search for graphs, then export quizzes to your learning management system of choice (e.g. Schoology, Canvas, Google Forms Quiz, etc.). Or you can create a slideshow with instant feedback via QR code and website.

Learn more…

5. Tuva Labs Content Library

Tuva Labs home page showing a few graphic resources.
Screenshot by author: Tuva Labs Home Page

Tuva Labs offers a rich collection of graphs and content you can use in your science class for teaching analysis skills. Their searchable content library, which includes both free and premium offerings, has rich content resources.

Some graph relevant links include the following:

AI Graph Makers

Once you’ve had a chance to work with graph reading, analysis, and design, check out these AI tools. These AI graph makers can certainly help:

Give these a shot later on when students are comfortable with their skills reading and analyzing graphs.

If you’re wanting to get up to speed on better analysis of graphs before working with your students, here is a great video for you:

Now that you have a wealth of tools, remember, it’s about getting students to analyze the graph, ask tough questions about the data the graph is based on, and why it matters.

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martin luther king
Content Areas

Teaching and Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

In the pantheon of individuals who have immediate name recognition in the United States, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is surely among the most well known. The national civil rights figure rose to prominence during the 1960s as a push for civil, political, and economic rights for minorities and, specifically African Americans, consumed the national conversation.

Perhaps best known for his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech delivered at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Southern Baptist preacher and organizer is today synonymous with the civil rights movement and is a continued inspiration for many Americans. Since his assassination in 1968, King has become a symbol of human and civil rights in the U.S. Indeed, more than 1,000 streets are named after him, in addition to a number of schools and other civic institutions.

Accordingly, Dr. King’s birthday has been celebrated as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United State since 1983. This year, the national MLK Day of Service celebration falls on January 18.  Here are some resources to help you teach and celebrate the occasion with your learners. 

Sources of Inspiration

Whether teaching in-person or remotely, you can explore Dr. King’s work and legacy with digital resources. 

Virtual Visits

Help students understand the context of King’s life with virtual tours of the MLK memorial in Washington, D.C. and King’s childhood home in Atlanta, GA.

Modern Reflections

Since last summer, civic and political discussions across the U.S. have focused on the ongoing protests against police brutality targeted at African Americans. These protests, centered on the Movement for Black Lives and inspired by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, have reminded many of the protests led by 1960s civil rights leaders, among them Dr. King. Last summer, we shared resources to help students and teachers make sense of our contemporary political moment in a historical context. You can find that post here. 

Beyond this, discussions of American politics in general have become both central and tense. When teaching current news and events, especially when these issues relate to history — as politics does — can be challenging. 

This week, students witnessed troubling scenes in the news. It’s difficult for adults to process these events, and it can be just as challenging, if not more so, for young people. Teachers looking to discuss today’s political events have much to consider.  For those looking to teach the MLK holiday in the context of today’s politics and current events, consider this collection of articles from Education Week.

More from TechNotes

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remote teacher interacting from a coffee shop
Good Teaching

Essential Gadgets for Remote Educators

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Have a teacher in your home and you need to give them something that will make them smile? Consider these pre-holiday season gifts to ease the strain of teaching online. These essential gadgets will make their remote teaching a breeze. One of them is bound to catch their eye.

essential gadgets

Essential Gadget #1 – Face Tracking Swivel Mount

Whether you are in the classroom or the home office, a swivel mount may be what your teacher needs. For less than fifty dollars each, these face-tracking swivel smartphone mounts follow you as you teach. Some of the benefits and features of these include:

  • Face or target tracking. These rely on auto face recognition and target tracking. Sure, you can use them for selfies and videos, but they’re also fabulous for teaching.
  • Phone holder. The mount doubles as a phone mount that you can use to perch your phone on.
  • 360 degree rotation
  • Remote control. Some more expensive models come with a remote control you can use.
  • Multi-stream so that you can stream your video to the web.

If you’re wondering what the pricing looks like, the lower end models start at $40 at Amazon. The high-end models with a three tracking sensors and wristband cost more ($760). Here’s a quick list of some of the ones that came up in a chat with TCEA members:

essential gadgets

  • Move N See Pixio Robot Cameraman ($760). What appears to an expensive, top of the line tracker that comes with sensor beacons to lock in on your position.
  • Pivo Pod Silver ($199). This auto-tracking smartphone mount comes with lots of features, including voice commands. With a 10-hour battery life, you can stuff your phone into it without worries.
  • Auto Tracking Smart Shooting Holder ($45.98). This offers a lot of functionality.
  • Apai Genie Cameraman ($39.99).   This mount comes with most of the features mentioned earlier and includes LiveStream, YouTube, and TikTok support.

There are many options available on the market. You’ll need to find something in your budget that does what you need it to do.  How many times could you have used something like this in the last few months?

Essential Gadget #2 – Document Camera

essential gadgetsWhen the pandemic sent most educators home in March 2020, some took equipment home. Whatever document camera you had, you took. But there were a lot of teachers caught at home who had no document camera available. The pandemic made it impossible to go back to the office and they needed something reliable. Enter the home document camera.

There are many wonderful document cameras available. Here are a few that are reliable, inexpensive, and good for at home remote teaching. Let’s take a quick look at them below:

As you may imagine, these are eight megapixel cameras that work well for showing a sheet of paper. One teacher I know uses her HUE USB document camera to write on small whiteboard as she demonstrates her math. The built-in app displays the document on her computer screen. It’s a simple matter to share the document camera app via Zoom so that students can watch. For teachers engaged in remote teaching, the document camera is a must have.

Essential Gadget #3 – Headset with Microphone

You would think a gadget round up wouldn’t be complete without a headset mic. Many educators have taken to relying on earbuds and yelling. That laptop microphone never quite does as good a job as you think. For that reason, my first buy for any teacher is a USB headset and microphone.

If you’re using the microphone on your laptop to record, you may want to spend a little money to get a better mic. A BIG tip is to avoid acoustics headphones or microphones like this one. Instead, get a USB  headset/microphone. While there are many expensive options, get a headset/mic combination that you can use for webinars, as well as screen recording.

essential gadgets

My favorite headset/mic combination (shown) is the Logitech H390 USB headset. It features a noise canceling microphone. Due to pandemic, the cost has risen, but it is dropping again.

Some less expensive USB headset/mic options:

Trust me, getting a headset/mic combination is worth the investment.

Those are three of the must-have gadgets for 2020. If  you don’t have them, you’ll wish you did. If you do have them, you will appreciate them all the more. That’s especially true if you bought them before the holiday rush. What other essential gadgets would you recommend for remote teaching?

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Educational TrendsESL/ELLGood Teaching

Remote Learning Strategy #3: Three More

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

In our Remote Learning Strategies series so far, we’ve explored two powerful strategies. Those strategies included classroom discussion and summarization. In this blog entry, we’ll review three more strategies that teachers should use. Ready for a whirlwind review of evidence-based strategies?

Strategy #3: Teacher Credibility

“One high-effect size instructional strategy would be teacher credibility,” says a teacher. She points out that understanding what she is teaching garners trust. Students respect her more when they understand what she is teaching and why. Of course, knowing the research about how to teach is important. To convey her confidence, she relies on screencasting (e.g. Screencastify).

Did You Know?

You can explore teacher credibility, along with other core strategies, via the TCEA self-paced, online course. The course Strategies That Work*: Core Components* explores evidence-based strategies and how to use them in the classroom and is now available.

When you think of teacher credibility, know that it is about perception. Teachers convey competence, trustworthiness, and caring. Students have to be answer affirmatively when they ask themselves, “Is this someone I can turn to?” (Source: Visible Learning Meta X database).

How do you influence student perception? One way might be to meet these three criteria:

  • Show up on time
  • Be prepared to teach
  • Have a thorough understanding of the content and be able to explain why learning it is important

Technology can assist some teachers in appearing as experts. For an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher focused on phonics, a digital platform such as ESL Games works well. When I first saw the website, I was a bit worried because it looked like it was just games focused on pronouncing words and learning vocabulary. Then I realized I had a bit of “old research” stuck in my head that needed replacing.

As a third grade student, I had learned phonics growing up as a second language learner. As a teacher in training, my professors denied the efficacy of phonics. Yet, it turns out they were wrong.

Reading comprehension is the product of two things. First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she sounded out.

Many educators don’t know this.

That’s because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools. Nor has it made it into many schools of education (Source: At A Loss for Words). More reading on vocabulary.

Can a credible teacher admit they are wrong? I’d like to think so. This next strategy taps into several other evidence-based strategies. Lori Oczkus (@LoriOczkus) terms these strategies as the “Fab Four” in her book Reciprocal Teaching At Work. John Hattie writes the foreword.

teacher credibility

Strategy #4: Reciprocal Teaching

“One high-effect size instructional strategy is reciprocal teaching,” says one educator. She goes on to say:

I love this one and I am learning more about this. The tool to help with it is Seesaw as you can see how they are processing and understanding of your teaching.

Reciprocal teaching aims at improving reading comprehension across all subject areas. It does this through the use of four strategies, including:

  • Summarizing
  • Questioning
  • Clarifying
  • Predicting

The teacher and students take turns leading dialogue about the text or media in question. They ask questions geared toward the role a person has assumed. One teacher relies on Zoom to engage in active monitoring of students’ use of the strategies.

Consider how this teacher uses Zoom:

Incorporating active monitoring by having students show me their work during ZOOM! I also love using the chat as a way for students to answer intro questions!

Other teachers rely on NearPod. They share informational text so that students have summaries and questions. Then, students make their own clarification statements and predict how something will work. “NearPod allows me to see all students working. I can provide instantaneous feedback as necessary.”

A final approach involves students using reciprocal teaching via Google Slides. “Do this when you use an organizer via a Google Slide.” She goes on to explain the directions in this way:

  • First, divide students into break out rooms.
  • Second, allow students to discuss and complete their respective roles in the team.

Reciprocal teaching has proven effective for K-12 and adult learners in my experience. Yet, it is a deep learning strategy for when deeper learning of already mastered basic concepts is needed. When introducing students to brand new information, consider using the jigsaw approach instead. Let’s explore that next.

Strategy #5: The Jigsaw Method

Explored in detail in other blog entries, this surface learning strategy is great at introducing new information. The Visible Learning Meta X database describes it in this way:

The Jigsaw instructional method is a cooperative approach to learning originally developed by Elliot Aronson. Following this method, a teacher introduces a main topic and several subtopics.

Jigsaw students are broken into “home groups”, and each member of the home group is assigned a subtopic. Then, students form expert groups to study their assigned subtopic through research and discussion.

After the students have mastered the subtopic in question, they return to their home group to report on their findings. At the conclusion of the exercise, each home group member has learned about each subtopic from a member of the relevant expert group or through their own investigation with an expert group.

One way that teachers are using jigsaw in remote learning involves Google Slides. This approach lends itself for use in the regular or hybrid classroom as well.

To use the jigsaw method with Google Slides, assign expert groups a collaborative slide deck. Each student adds their info to the expert group slide. Comments within the slide deck make up the final presentation slide(s). At the end, each expert group member copies the slide/s to the “table group” slide deck. They include any explanation in the slide comments or as an embedded video.

Aside from Google Slides, Google Classroom was also mentioned. “I love the idea of using Jigsaw in the classroom.” That teacher describes it in this way:

Teachers can divide roles and create prompts in Google Docs. Then they can be assigned in Google Classroom. Teachers can later have students work as a whole by having them collaborate on a final group Doc.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll explore more ways that teachers are matching up digital tools with high-effect size strategies. Stay tuned!

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local history
Social Studies

Exploring Local History During Remote Learning

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Even when much of our time is spent at home, learners and educators can still get out and explore history. We can even do so virtually, and in the process, build deeper connections between students, schools, and local communities. Today we have new digital tools that students can use to learn local history and even explore their genealogy and family history.

In this post, we’ll explore a few tools any educator can use to help learners discover the histories and stories of their own towns, schools, and local areas, even when teaching remotely. 

The Power of Local History

What’s the history of the community you teach or learn in? While we may know the broad strokes of the state or region we live in, local history is often tucked away on historical markers or in collections at the local library. 

Digital tools can bring that hidden history to light, with students as the primary investigators in building the story of where they live. Students may want to work on an oral history project, activities based on local historic buildings or monuments, or even their own family history and genealogy. Growing amounts of Open Educational Resources can also help boost and preserve local history, too.

Writer Coshandra Dillard outlines the vitality of local history in an article from Teaching Tolerance.

It’s hard to find real local history in textbooks, and it takes courage to teach these hidden, hard histories. But it’s not hard to help students uncover this history. They can start with the origins of the names of streets, schools and government buildings in their city. Or they can consider how the hard history of our nation played out in their community. After learning about the slave trade, they might explore the lives of enslaved people who lived in their town. When learning about the courage of youth during Freedom Summer, they can track the fight for voting rights. Or they can learn about their district’s integration story and compare it to the Little Rock Nine and other stories. 

Local history helps students better understand their community, as well as the inequities in education, poverty, health outcomes and other issues that they see around them every day. 

“Recovering and Teaching Local History” Coshandra Dillard. https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/recovering-and-teaching-local-history

As Dillard notes, the history of individual communities can be an effective way to learn about the struggles for civil, political, and economic rights that we are seeing resonating in U.S. society today.

Learning in Our Genes

With the number of genealogy services and products available today, understanding your own personal history is easier than ever, even with tools for the classroom.

One way for students to “do” the past as historians is to research their family’s past. Researching family history helps students create context for studying the past and helps students develop a sense of place in the present. In addition, a family history project can help foster connections with students’ guardians at home and help us, as teachers, better understand our students’ backgrounds. A student genealogy project is certainly not a new idea, but new online tools make it easier than ever to uncover family records and connect distant relatives.

“Joe Jelen on Discovering History Through Student Genealogy Research” Joe Jelen. https://teachinghistory.org/nhec-blog/25372

Educators looking for free, digital resources can check out these activities from the National Archives, or a number of family tree activities from FamilyHistoryDaily.com.

Meet Clio

Inspired by the ancient Greek muse of history, Clio is an interactive online database of local historical information, perfect for students and teachers looking to build local connections and all sort of skills from reading to social studies standards.

Clio allows classrooms, institutions, and individuals to create accounts and add to the vast project of local history. Then they can edit and add entries for historic sites, people, and places, complete with interactive maps, videos, easy-to-use citations, and accessibility features like text to audio. Several entries can even be combined into a tour, allowing users to explore multiple thematically-related sites and events.

Using Clio

The National Endowment for the Humanities’ EDSITEment! page includes tips on how to effectively use Clio in your teaching. Be sure to check out their recommendations.

Below, you can also enjoy step-by-step videos that guide you through the use of the Clio platform.

More Resources

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remote learning
Good Teaching

Remote Learning: Keep It Simple

by Ernest Gonzales, Guest Author
written by Ernest Gonzales, Guest Author

Here we are, starting school virtually for the first time in human history. This situation is unprecedented and full of uncertainty, but one thing is certain; a lot of learning will be happening — teacher learning. As school districts adapt to life during COVID, systems and tools are rapidly being introduced to assist with the challenges of remote learning. 

Teachers will need to quickly learn how to use this new technology to ensure student engagement and success. Getting to know these new tech tools in such a short span of time poses many challenges for our diverse population of teachers as they work to meet the needs of students and their multiple learning styles. If we approach this problem with the idea of keeping things simple, then we can better manage the new learning and help our students and families be successful as well.  So what exactly does keeping it simple mean?

Focus on the Essential Tools for Remote Learning

As an educator, acquaint yourself with the primary tools you will be using for teaching and communication. Educators need a solid application for live-streaming synchronous learning, and right now, we’re using Zoom to meet this need. For those students who are not able to participate during live lessons, Flipgrid offers an intuitive, user-friendly app that provides a way to record video communication and more.

Go Beyond the Foundations

In addition to these fundamental apps, teachers need a learning management system to create a digital version of their real world classroom. For many educators, Google Classroom is a popular tool. While Google Classroom is relatively easy to learn and start using, it lacks many of the more powerful features of a full-fledged LMS. With this in mind, we can see how a good tool for live video, an easy-to-use application for recorded video, and a solid LMS are essential and provide a strong foundation for online learning.

Prioritize Adaptability

When considering additional apps to add to your essential tech toolbox, invest your learning in tools that can be adapted for a variety of uses. One often overlooked but extremely flexible tool is Google Slides. Teachers often see it only as a presentation tool, but Slides can be used in a variety of creative ways, from publishing collaborative classroom magazines to creating interactive models.

Get Creative

Look through Get Creative with Google Slides to get more ideas on building Google Slides into your classroom. Think about altering any traditionally-formatted presentations you plan to use in your digital teaching to provide space for students to take notes and reflect on their learning as part of their learning process. Making this modification to any Google Slides presentations you use will enable students to hear you through Zoom, see your slides on their own copies of the presentation, and engage with the content, all in one place.

Flipgrid is another highly adaptable tool.  Consider using it to bring guest speakers into your class, to provide opportunities for global collaboration, or even to gamify your lessons with Fliphunts. For more ideas to spark your creativity, explore Five Ideas for Re-Imagining Flipgrid.

Keep the Practices That Work

All of us now face the reality of teaching our students using technology, but this is nothing new: TEA adopted Technology TEKS for grades K-12 in 2011 to prepare our students for college and beyond. When thinking about how to teach and integrate technology, start with tried and true teaching strategies and practices. Chunk concepts and scaffold the learning by teaching one or two concepts at a time and practicing these essential concepts with your students until they demonstrate understanding.

Think Like a Coach

Think about teaching your students to use technology in an educational setting in terms of coaching. A good coach would not ask novice athletes to perform complex plays their first time on the field and expect success. Instead, the coach would provide the athletes with opportunities and time to first master the fundamentals.

As teachers, we need to do the same for our students and ourselves. Since learning new technologies is similar to learning a new language, think about utilizing strategies for English learners to help students become acquainted with the language and practice of online learning. Learners, both young and adult, will not be fluent in speaking technology initially, but with daily practice, we can build these skills.

Teachers are incredible people with meaningful jobs that create positive effects in our community. As teachers, we chose this profession because we have a passion for education, for our community, and for promoting the love of learning. Educators face a variety of daily challenges, and no one would deny that remote online learning is a challenge. But if we keep it simple and take it in measured steps, we can make it not only manageable, but also transformative. 

Best of luck to everyone this school year.

Ernest Gonzales is the Ed Tech & Design Coordinator for SAISD. You can follow him on twitter @ergoEDU.

Photo: Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha / CC BY-SA

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SEL Practices
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Bring SEL Practices to Your Remote Classroom

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

In times of uncertainty like we are experiencing now, it is important to bring social and emotional (SEL) practices to your remote classroom. Some students might be feeling anxious; therefore, we want to create a safe space for learning. When students feel safe, they find it easier to learn. You can help build that safe space for learning by incorporating SEL in your teaching.

Below are a few ways to implement SEL in your remote classroom.

Have Discussions

  • Have conversations with students. Ask them “What are you excited about today? or “Are you concerned about anything?” Encourage your students to share.
  • Give students different scenarios. Then, in pairs or as a whole class, allow students to discuss how a person might feel or act given that scenario.

Teach SEL Vocabulary

  • Include vocabulary words associated with SEL in your classroom activities.
  • Students could also come up with synonyms for words associated with their feelings.

Incorporate Writing Activities

  • Ask students to write about how they are feeling. They can write about how they are feeling about the pandemic or having to physically distance themselves from others.
  • Students can write poems or stories. They can be collaborative writing activities and done together as a class or with groups of classmates.
  • Writing prompts can also be given to students.

Play Games

  • Games can be used to reinforce or practice SEL skills as well as build community in your classroom. Games such as Kindness Bingo or Emotions Scavenger Hunt can be played.
  • Quandry is a free learning game on ethical decision making. The game is designed for flexible use and includes educator resources such as lesson plans and curriculum guides.

Integrate Drawing

  • As mentioned in this blog post, there are many benefits to incorporating drawing in your classroom. You students might want to visually express themselves.
  • Ask students to draw a picture of something that makes them happy or ask them to draw a self-portrait.
  • There are many online drawing tools and apps that students can use to create their drawings.

Regardless of how you have set up your remote classroom, it is important to include weekly or even daily activities that give students an opportunity to talk about how they are feeling.  Best practices for remote learning suggest that SEL should be at the forefront of remote learning. If you would like more ideas and grade-level resources, I encourage you to sign up for our self-paced Social and Emotional Learning online course.

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