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hybrid learning

How 2020 Gave Us A Chance to Re-invent Learning

by Afton Francis, Guest Author and Ben Tan, Guest Author April 14, 2021

written by Afton Francis, Guest Author and Ben Tan, Guest Author

The events of 2020 disrupted education like never before. According to the World Bank, COVID-19 created the worst crisis to education and learning in a century.

As the US slowly emerges from lockdown, research indicates that the majority of schools in the US are now offering “hybrid” learning formats where 25-50% of instruction, assignments, and discussion take place online. Students study course materials outside of class, and then utilize classroom time to reinforce learning, ask questions, and interact with their teachers.

So with hybrid learning set to stay, at least in some capacity, we’re in a situation where we have the opportunity to re-think and re-invent modern education. In fact, with the right approach, technology, and learning solutions, we can even start to overcome some of the challenges that have troubled the education sector for decades.

Also, don’t forget that, right now, there’s also the option of ESSER funding for new technology in the state of Texas. Read more about this here.

What Does Effective Hybrid Learning Look Like?

For hybrid learning to work effectively, both teachers and students need to have reliable, high-performing devices and solutions at their fingertips — whether they’re together in the classroom or working/learning remotely. Effective hybrid learning means:

Easy-to-Run Remote Classes

In a quality hybrid learning environment, students need to have a reliable way of engaging with the teacher and their peers, even when learning remotely. The Surface Hub 2 is an ideal innovation in this regard, as it has a large touchscreen, is portable (it can be moved about on wheels), and has in-built, high quality cameras and microphones. A teacher using a Surface Hub 2 to run remote classes can see more of their students on screen, quickly identify those who are disengaged, run interactive digital sessions, and easily share content that everyone can see.

Tools to Keep Students Engaged

One of the major challenges with hybrid learning is keeping students engaged when they’re not in the classroom. During the pandemic, 42% of students indicated that staying motivated was a major problem for them when it came to completing coursework online.

When students connect via a Surface device, however, they can get natural experiences that feel like they’re in the classroom. Thanks to quality audio and video, they can get a firm grasp of what the teacher is saying and/or showing. They can also leverage Microsoft Teams to brainstorm with classmates, see the teacher’s mark ups and notes, and more. Surface devices also come in a range of generous screen sizes, which research indicates is important for students’ comprehension.

Easy, Efficient Access to Information

To run efficiently, hybrid learning requires both students and teachers having the information they need at their fingertips. With Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams on Surface devices, everything is in one central, secure location. Classes can share notes, store images, or manage documents via OneNote. With Teams, teachers can also set up digital classrooms the way they want to teach with the ability to create channels for certain subjects and tools to help them manage behavior, such as the “mute” function, and student lobby feature.

Support for STEM Learning

The latest Intel® processors also give Surface devices the power to support bandwidth-intensive, STEM-focused applications, which stimulate students’ learning and keep them interested. This includes things like Minecraft Education Edition, MakeCode apps, and video games that help kids co-author and be collaboratively creative. There are also 680,000 apps in the Microsoft store, including tools for both content consumption and creation, to enhance students’ learning.

Everyone Can Write and Think Naturally

The Surface Pen accessory is another great tool for both students and teachers. Students can write onto their devices naturally using digital ink and the Surface Pen, which helps with conceptualizing, prototyping, sketching, brainstorming, memorizing, and knowledge construction. Teachers can also mark up materials easily, plan lessons using familiar Microsoft Office programs, or share materials with colleagues.

Trusted Security and Ease of Management

Of course, Surface devices also come with Microsoft’s rigorous security for absolute peace of mind. With Windows Autopilot, IT teams can deploy, reset, and repurpose new devices with an experience that is zero-touch for IT.

Learning for All Abilities and Levels

Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft solutions come equipped with inclusive tools that help students of all abilities and backgrounds engage and participate. Microsoft 365 offers accommodations for neuro-diverse populations and those with visual or auditory impairments, as well as tools to aid English-language learners.

The Surface family of devices offers you the ultimate in versatility and flexibility, so you can equip classrooms with devices and accessories that meet everyone’s needs. Whether you want a laptop, touchscreen, pen-enabled device, or even a two-in-one, the Surface family has something for every type of learner and teacher without ever scrimping on performance or power.

Want to Find Out More?

To get started with the Surface, visit Education – Surface.

April 14, 2021 0 comment

Using Classroom Display Solutions for Hybrid Learning

by Epson America, Inc., Guest Author January 14, 2021

written by Epson America, Inc., Guest Author

This post was sponsored by Epson. It was originally published here.

As schools adapt to the new COVID-19 education landscape, many are finding that a hybrid classroom model offers the best solution. Students get some of their instruction in person and some from home, offering a balance that can help them feel connected while reducing their exposure to others.

Hybrid models also help schools comply with social distancing by providing a way to create smaller class sizes without having to expand square footage. Schedules can be adjusted, with a portion of students coming to school during set hours or on certain days of the week and learning from home at other times.

While hybrid models provide solutions during the pandemic, they also introduce a challenge. Teachers must find a way to create an engaging and collaborative environment in a classroom that’s both remote and physical.

Delivering Coursework Near and Far

In-person and online are two distinct types of learning, and hybrid models require teachers to balance them in a way that is seamless to ensure consistency. Technology needs to be the bridge that connects students and teachers and sets the stage for a successful school year. But it must be the right technology.

While many administrators chose video conferencing platforms like Zoom as a quick fix when the pandemic forced many schools to shift to online learning, schools can also leverage a suite of learning tools and display technology that work together and help bridge the divide between in-person and remote learning.

Classrooms should be equipped with a PC, an interactive projector like Epson Brightlink, a document camera, and a video conferencing platform like Zoom that has a whiteboard function.

How It All Comes Together

An interactive projector and document camera are two essential tools for creating a collaborative and engaging classroom experience whether your students are in the classroom, at home, or both.

One of the useful features built into Zoom is its whiteboard function. Teachers can start and control a session directly from the board, delivering a virtual lesson to students who are logged in on devices at home. Students who are in class, as well as those learning remotely, can view and participate in the lesson. And students at home can participate with their work viewed on any of the devices in the Zoom session, as well as on the projector display at the front of the classroom.

In class, teachers need to instruct students who are sitting in socially distant layouts. Projectors provide an opportunity to create engaging instruction by sharing content that can include documents and videos. The size of the display in relation to the student’s location impacts engagement, learning, and comprehension. Students should sit a maximum distance of six times the vertical display height, and interactive projectors address these concerns by allowing students to learn effectively while sitting in spaced out classroom arrangements.

Document cameras also help teachers share their screen with students who are learning remotely, to easily introduce visuals into the lesson. When they’re done sharing, they can simply switch back to the whiteboard and continue the lesson

When properly delivered, hybrid learning can deliver benefits to students and teachers. Smaller class sizes can allow for more individualized education, which benefits students who may need extra help as well as those who are ready to work ahead.

Benefits of Hybrid Learning

In-person lessons can become more engaging when interactive tools that also help schools comply with health regulations are used. And students who need to stay at home due to health reasons can feel like they’re still an important part of the classroom when they can participate virtually through the use of collaborative whiteboard tools.

See How It Works

As teachers and students adapt to new hybrid education models, connected, collaborative learning is more important than ever before. Learn how Epson projectors and document cameras can help create engaging hybrid learning environments to meet the new needs of today’s classroom.

Watch the video to see how it works!

January 14, 2021 0 comment

Digital Literacy Educational Trends

Tips for Integrating Smartphones into Lesson Plans

by Luke Smith, Guest Author October 14, 2020

written by Luke Smith, Guest Author

Let’s face it: Teaching changed significantly in 2020 thanks to COVID-19. And it may be a while before things get back to normal. Now, as teachers, students, and parents make their through the fall semester, a lot of questions remain unanswered.

Whether your school has chosen to reopen its doors, experiment with a hybrid model, or remain fully online, the order of the day will undoubtedly be adaptability. Welcoming your students to the fall semester, no matter if you’re doing it face-to-face or virtually, is going to require some improvisation, at least for the time being.

If your school has reopened, you’ll need to engage with your students while adhering to social distancing and other health guidelines, and that’s going to make even the most familiar and inviting classroom feel strange, and perhaps uncomfortable, at least for a while.

And if you’re teaching remotely or in a hybrid model, you’re going to have to figure out the best strategies to optimize your students’ learning at a distance.

A Tool in the Palm of Your Hands

But there’s good news because now teachers have more tools than ever to provide their students with the most enriching and inspiring learning experience possible, regardless whether your students are in the room with you or connected to you only in cyberspace. Best of all, it doesn’t require a multimillion-dollar technology investment or a degree in computer science from MIT to make it work.

Perhaps your best tool is right there in the palm of your students’ hands (or hiding in their bags): the ubiquitous smartphone.

Why the Smartphone?

Life in the new normal of coronavirus has not only changed the ways we work and learn, but also how we interact with one another, even our closest friends and family. That not only takes a significant mental and emotional toll on us all, but it can also be profoundly detrimental to student learning.

Anyone who’s spent any time in a classroom will understand why. Students aren’t just empty vessels you pour information into. They need engagement and interaction. And Bandura’s Social Learning Theory explains why. Bandura, a psychologist, says learning is a deeply social activity. That is, students learn from and through one another.

Getting Engagement

Engagement with other students, with the teacher, and with the external world around them enables the acquisition of information. Even more importantly, however, it helps students to absorb the information and transform the material into something useful, something they can apply. Students learn best via collaboration. Often, the more chances for interaction, the better, whether virtual or in person.

For instance, if students are learning about gravity, speed, and velocity by dropping an egg without breaking it, they’ll learn best by watching their peers and seeing what worked and didn’t work. They’ll see a friend’s egg broke when it was wrapped only in tissue, so they’ll try bubble wrap. Then other students watching will see the wrap worked better, but not perfectly, so perhaps they’ll try wrapping the egg in bubble wrap and putting it in a box. And so on, student’s understanding growing with every attempt they observe or engage in. Smartphones give us another tool to engage in this kind of learning.

Social Connections (Even While Social Distancing)

In the age of COVID, though, the social aspects of learning are sometimes in danger of being lost, or at least significantly changed, even when students are together with their teachers in a physical classroom. Smartphones, however, can help to bridge that critical gap, providing the interactivity, engagement, and collaboration that social distancing guidelines might otherwise undercut.

Here are some strategies for using smartphones to restore the sociability of the socially distanced classroom, whether you’re online, in person, or both.

1. Calm, Cool, and Connected

Even if your school has reopened for regular or hybrid courses, chances are you will have at least a few students who will be learning remotely, either because of their own pre-existing conditions or those of someone in the household. So one of the first and best uses of smartphone technologies is to help your students stay connected with you and their peers, even if they don’t have access to broadband at home, by using their smartphone connection.

2. Schoolhouse Here, There, and Everywhere

Smartphone apps can help your students download written texts and videos, as well as create documents and securely submit assignments via various free and low-cost apps such as LibreOffice. You can even livestream your classroom to your students’ smartphones on a secure server through an app like Zoom, Facebook Live, or Google Meet. That way, no student needs to miss a moment of the action!

3. Get Outside

Another terrific way to engage your students, both in person and online, is to incorporate geocaching into your lesson plans. If you’ve not yet heard of geocaching, you’re about to fall in love, because geocaching is a fantastic way to teach a range of skills from math, geography, and Earth science to reading, critical thinking, and creative problem solving.

Basically, geocaching is a treasure hunt on steroids. And it’s endlessly customizable. If you’re teaching in the classroom, you can geocache in the school’s playground or even in the classroom itself! Additionally, if you’re teaching remotely, geocaching is a fantastic way to get your students, with their families, safely outside, such as in a local park.

4. I Get By With a Little Help …

As exciting as these tools may be, perhaps the greatest benefit of the smartphone in the classroom, both digital and live, is that the smartphone puts an entire world of information at your students’ fingertips. Not only that, but your students can use their phones not just to acquire information, but also to test their knowledge through tools such as Quizlet.

You can share content you want your students to explore directly to their smartphones. You can also create assignments that require them to do their own research. You can even lead them in real time through searches to help them answer questions, look up information, and, in the process, learn important lessons about digital information literacy.

Best of all, with tools like Poll Everywhere, you can receive real-time feedback from student questions to polled responses, no matter whether your students are online, on the ground, or both. This allows you to gauge students’ reactions to the presentation and adjust your strategy accordingly.

The Takeaway about Smartphones

Teaching in 2020 is a whole different world than it was just one year ago. Fortunately, teachers have the opportunity to leverage technologies that are likely already in students’ hands to support their learning. With a bit of strategy and a lot of creativity, you can use smartphone technologies to give your students an unsurpassed learning experience, whether they’re learning in the classroom or from home.

Photo via Pixabay.

October 14, 2020 0 comment