What worries me

There are so many questions and concerns I have, beyond teaching the lesson itself. If I want to give students a paper so we can break from the screen time, I worry about passing out papers or collecting them from students. I worry about them having to sharpen their pencil. I worry that a student did not clean their desk or the desk shield enough. I worry about it all.

When I’m looking in my classroom with my students, I worry that I’m losing the engagement of the students who are at home. That I’m doing them a disservice because I’m somehow not providing enough and that there’s something that I could do better. I asked myself: Should I create a video of myself teaching every single lesson and then have all of the students watch it? Should I have the students at home watch the video while I teach the students in my classroom? When I give a test, do I provide students in the classroom with a paper copy and create a digital assessment for the online students? Should I wait to give all students the test when they’re physically in the classroom so I can answer their questions and make sure they’re not looking up the answer somewhere? But what about the students who are fully virtual? There are so many things to consider each day.

I believe that if schools were doing the four days synchronously and one day asynchronously, then all students would be getting the same instruction, the same activities, they could hear and see the teacher at the same time. In the hybrid world, as it is in this definition of hybrid, I feel like because of the split, we are going to lose more of the students. If we would have them together four out of five days in virtual, I do truly believe that the hybrid cuts that in half. That might be an unpopular opinion but that is what I notice based on my own experience, my thought process, the conversations that I’ve had, and everything that I’ve seen shared from teachers over the last couple of months. It is how I am feeling during my own experience and I’m working on finding ways to improve.

My best tips

What has helped me with some of those initial challenges is bringing in some extra equipment and deciding on a few digital tools to use consistently. First, by using my HUE HD Pro Document camera, students could see me in the classroom and I didn’t have to stay in front of my netbook computer webcam. It also helps with being able to write on paper and share it on the screen for all students to see. Connecting a microphone to my desktop so that the sound could be heard in the classroom, students can speak to each other and I was not attached to my computer, and could move around the room. Making sure that I set everything up ahead of time, keeping a list nearby that reminded me of the time for each class, and a checklist for each period of what we need to do to maintain our safety.

Choose some different digital tools to provide interactive lessons. The tools that I’ve been using the most have been Buncee, Edpuzzle, Formative, Nearpod, Gimkit, and Synth. These are tools we have used for several years however they provide more possibilities for collaboration and are great for having students engage more in the lesson.

The first couple of days of hybrid I felt like I was not managing everything very well. Shifting from fully virtual to hybrid is a big transition for students and teachers and families of course. But when we started virtual, it took a few weeks to feel like I was in a better workflow, and then making the shift to hybrid I felt like I was starting all over again. Although this has been a challenging time with all of our transitions since March, we are much better prepared than we were then. Even if we do have to continue shifting between virtual, hybrid, and in-person, we have more experience and versatile tools available to us and our students that can help and we are building our skill set in the process.

There is no perfect solution but the best that we can do is to keep trying and being open to new ideas and tools and strategies. We need to embrace the challenges and times where we feel like we failed, and learn from it and move on.

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Looking for a new book to read? Many stories from educators, two student chapters, and a student-designed cover for In Other Words.

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Having taught the first nine weeks of the school year fully virtual, it took some time to adjust to all that goes into teaching online. Unlike the end of the past school year, we were running a regular schedule with classes meeting synchronously. After the first two days, I quickly figured out that I needed more than one computer and headphones. I needed at least two devices, a computer stand or two, and a ring light so that my students could actually see me. Beyond these tech adjustments, there was a struggle to get into a workflow. While we do many of the same tasks in our physical classroom space, it takes less time and the way we complete them looks different.

It was a process. Remembering to take attendance, mute and unmute myself, record the lesson, and make sure I turned off the incoming video for the students first, took some time. Developing a routine so I could minimize loss of instructional time as I worked to share my screen and verify it could be seen, teach while also letting students in who kept getting kicked out of meetings or were coming late to class, and remember to download the attendance list before ending the meeting. Of course, that meant I had to end the meeting, rather than just leave, otherwise the meeting continues and I don’t get the recording. Remember to download and then upload the recording to each class Teams space. This is just a short list of the tasks that we have to keep up with when teaching in the virtual space and if all students are learning remotely.

To say that it’s exhausting is an understatement. There are a lot of things to balance, challenges we have to push through, and roadblocks that pop up, especially when it comes to technology. We need to make sure our students can participate and that we provide them with the most meaningful learning experience that we can while also acknowledging that we are not in a typical learning situation.

While it was challenging, part of me wanted to stay with virtual learning because I felt like I finally had a good workflow and had improved on the types of learning opportunities I was creating for my students. But I also wanted to shift to hybrid so I had that time in class to see the students. Neither of these is ideal and I look forward to when we can all be back in our classrooms together.

Preparing for the shift

How do you teach in this type of hybrid, the teaching live and online simultaneously? I tried to prepare myself ahead of time by joining in discussions in different learning communities, participating in Twitter chats, and asking my own questions to find out what other teachers were experiencing. What many of them said was that it was overwhelming doing two jobs at the same time. Beyond its impact on us as teachers, I worry about the students who have questions that most likely can’t ask them because teachers are interacting with the students in the physical classroom or vice versa. It is a lot to take on and it’s not ideal but what I learned from spring school closures is that you have to make the best of it and you do the best you can.

How do you prepare? You have to be intentional about the types of learning experiences our students need. They need to feel comfortable in their learning space wherever that is. They need to be able to ask questions and find resources whenever they need them. We need support from our administrators when it does become overwhelming or we’re exhausted because we are and will continue to be. We need to know that it’s okay to take a break and to not have to worry so much about covering all of the same content that we normally would in any other “normal” school year. Nothing about this right now is normal and unfortunately, the likelihood is that it won’t return to normal anytime soon.

From the spring until now I’ve changed a lot about myself as a teacher. It has been hard to break away from the typical activities, content, or other materials that I have been accustomed to using in my classroom. But what I have learned is that we really need to think about how to best assess students and give them opportunities to practice because the answers are all over the Internet. As a language teacher, I battle against the use of online translators and a website that provides students with answers to any textbook or workbook you can find. There is also the issue of students copying each other’s homework. With these challenges, it forces us to think very carefully about what we’re asking our students to do. I tried some new tools thinking I could steer students away from using those and it was an improvement but there were still problems.

When it comes to technology, we can’t assume that students know exactly how to use it so we have to show them. When they use the technology for copying text directly from a website or in my class, using a translator, or finding an answer key, it is so frustrating. It is a struggle but we need to instead teach them why they shouldn’t use these tactics and how it negatively impacts their learning potential.

The great balancing act

The first day was interesting making the adjustments to our new classroom procedures and setup. As students come in, they grab towels to wipe down their desks and then log into the Teams meeting on their phone so they can access any notes in the chat.  I have a workspace at the front of the room, with one computer on a stand in front of me and my other computer propped up so that if I am screen sharing something on one, I can let students into the Teams meeting on the other computer. I use the stand so I am visible to the students in my classroom and online however I felt like I was greatly limiting my ability to interact with all students.

I started to lose my voice from having to speak louder through the mask and students at home could not hear me well. If the students at home spoke, only I could hear them and if students in the class asked a question, I often could not hear them because of the headset, so I kept having to remove one of the earbuds. I had to keep repeating everything and typing it into the meeting chat so that all students could read the message.  When I wrote on the board, students at home could not see what I wrote and so I needed a better plan.

**Interested in writing a guest blog for my site? Would love to share your ideas! Submit your post here.

Looking for a new book to read? Many stories from educators, two student chapters, and a student-designed cover for In Other Words.

Find these available at bit.ly/Pothbooks  

Each summer, I look forward to attending the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference. Typically held at the end of June, this 5-day event brings in educators from around the world to learn more about how technology transforms teaching and learning. In past years, more than 70 countries have been represented with upwards of 20,000 or more participants. As with many conferences this year, ISTE had to make the shift to a virtual event. Initially pushing the event back a few months to the end of November in the hopes that it could be an in-person conference. Unfortunately circumstances due to the pandemic led to the difficult decision to make the event fully virtual. 

While there have been many conferences making the shift to virtual events this year, none of them have been the size of what ISTE typically brings in each year. You might wonder how could an event of this size be held fully online, considering the variety of session types, the number of people and the additional events that are typically held during the in-person event.  To provide all of this and more, ISTE created the event using a custom-built virtual platform and extended the length of the conference slightly, spanning it from November 29th through December 5th. More than 11,000 attendees were registered and in the platform, attendees could see the number of people participating live in the platform, engage in conversations with other educators and edtech companies, and navigate easily through their dashboard. 

ISTE CEO Richard Culatta kicked off the conference with the Sunday Mainstage events with featured speakers Megan Forbes, Brandie Wright, and Dr. Quentin J. Lee, high school principal known for creating viral COVID parody videos, including Can’t Touch This. Among the highlights were the featured voices this year, Ibram X. Kendi, a professor and award-winning author of several bestselling books including “How to Be an Antiracist” spoke during the Monday Mainstage event. Each day, the mainstage events had a theme such as inspire, include, empathize that connected with each featured speaker throughout the week.

Making choices for professional learning and networking!

I was impressed right away once I had a chance to interact with the platform, prior to the start of the conference. I looked forward to seeing how the ISTE team would create all of the learning opportunities in the virtual space. This year, the conference includes thousands of sessions with hundreds of options each day on topics such as assessment, blended and online learning, digital citizenship, emerging technologies, equity and inclusion, social-emotional learning, data privacy and cybersecurity and more.  There were some great topics and events to look forward to including esports, VR, Ted Masterclass talks and ignites! Sessions were divided into main categories which included:

Explore & Create, which offered experiences including Creation Labs, playgrounds and activities for educators to explore new ideas and tools. There were sessions grouped under the Listen & Learn category which included the Mainstage theater sessions, hundreds of panel discussions and snapshot sessions. The Participate and Share options included formats such as discussion forums, poster sessions, interactive lectures that were designed for attendees to be able to interact more with the presenters. The last type of session focus were Engage and Connect, which provided opportunities for networking and building social connections.

[image from ISTE conference site]

Finding Your Way  in a Virtual Conference

Once logged into the platform, you could navigate to your dashboard to view upcoming sessions, meetings requested, access the chat, favorite sessions and other digital resources in your digital tote. Each day attendees would receive some personally picked sessions for that day, to help with sorting through all of the hundreds of options available for each day of the conference. Similar to prior ISTE conferences, there was an email or posting on social media as well as announcements that popped up on the platform to let you know what to look forward to throughout the day. At the yearly in-person event, ISTE relies on a conference app to help attendees find sessions, locate rooms on the map, engage in gamified professional learning, add items to a digital tote and more. The app concept was fully embedded within the Live platform used for the conference which was quite amazing with all of that it offered and how robust it was.  Everything was easy to find and very visually engaging in your dashboard. 

For anyone looking to gamify their conference experience, they could go to the Game Center. Attendees joined a team, and then received points by attending sessions, participating in conversations or video meetings with other attendees, exploring the exhibits and completing daily activities and challenges.  

With so many choices, searching the program schedule for a conference of this size can be overwhelming, however this year, ISTE offered a “Learning Journey Design Desk” with live designers available to help attendees build their personal conference schedule!

Daily Conference Takeaways

For anyone who joined in the conference or just wanted a daily recap, Chris J Nesi, of House of Edtech podcast, held a live recap each night at 10pm EST and Brian Romero Smith and Valerie Lewis held a #PassTheScopeEDU After the Bell live broadcast at 6pm EST. Each night educators joined in both shows to share the sessions they had attended during the day and to engage in some conversations about all things education.

On Sunday night Chris Nesi had Dr. Quentin J. Lee, who spoke on Sunday during the Mainstage session how school impacted him and the importance of relationship building. Dr. Lee placed emphasis on communication and customer service, reaching kids beyond the screen. He said, “Build relationships and we will watch schools soar.”  On Tuesday night, I was able to join with Jaime Donally, ISTE Author, Educator and Consultant, to chat about augmented and virtual and recap our conference experience and how educators can get started with AR/VR in the classroom.

ISTE in VR. James McCrary, the incoming chair of ISTE Virtual Environments Network, and Steven Sato, organized several sessions of ISTE held in VR. To do so, they used Engage, which is a virtual reality platform that can be used for holding classes, events, meetings and more in a virtual reality environment. The sessions were held entirely in VR, and anyone could create an account and did not need any experience to participate. During the week of ISTE, there was a nightly gathering held in Engage where speakers shared about the history of VR in education and what the future might bring with these technologies. The speakers included Hall Davidson, Caitlin Krause, and Azine Davoudzadeh

Building PLN. Attendees were also able to network in a variety of ways during the conference. One option was to initiate a video or text chat in the “Connect.” Using information provided from your profile, a custom list was generated of people you should meet based. Profiled questions were focused on educational interests, preferred session formats and attendees also had to choose a team (owl, fox, octopus, and more) to participate in gamified professional development through networking activities and challenges each day. The live chat had more than 60,000 messages on Monday and so the ISTE team then created separate channels focused on topics, to help streamline conversations and also to encourage more networking. 

Playgrounds. Many of the professional learning networks held virtual playgrounds, having educators present on different topics for 30, 60 or 90-minute sessions. These took place throughout the weekends and during the week and spanned a longer period than what might typically happen during the in-person conference. One thing about a conference the size of ISTE is that it can be hard to get to all of the things. Thousands of steps logged each day by attendees, traveling throughout the conference and the post-conference events.  In a virtual event, we have less of the feeling of missing out on some sessions because we can catch recordings or we can access the content beyond when the actual event takes place. Playgrounds are always an opportunity to learn a lot of new ideas and make new connections.

Poster Sessions. A new feature was the virtual poster session which provided a very helpful template for anybody to create. During the scheduled time, presenters would interact with attendees, share additional resources and could check in with the chat throughout the week. Each poster had a demo video so attendees could learn about the session if they did not make it to the live presentation.

[a glimpse of the virtual poster session, Infographics]

Expo hall. During the conference there was a virtual Expo hall with over 300 exhibitors.  Attendees could visit each booth to watch live demos, chat live  with representatives from the tech company, quickly add resources to their digital tote and enter raffles for the chance to win prizes. The expo hall is always a space that I make time for when in-person because of the opportunity to talk with each company and see new features and devices. The platform offered a good substitute for the in-person experience.

There are benefits to conferences which offer virtual components of course, being more accessible to more educators and in many cases with a decreased cost. The variety of learning opportunities during this year’s ISTE conference were fantastic. Typical events at the conference include sessions, workshops, networking events, the expo, and poster sessions and playgrounds. One might think that it will be kind of difficult to offer the same types of events in a virtual space however ISTE provided  a great learning opportunity for educators from around the world. Being able to access the session recordings, connect with others on a global scale, set your own schedule and gather new ideas and resources all within the interactive conference platform. I really appreciated the ease of navigating the platform, accessing sessions and resources and making new connections. 

A big thanks to the ISTE Team that planned this impressive virtual event. Although I prefer being able to be in the same “space” with PLN, ISTE20 Live did not disappoint. There were learning and networking opportunities everywhere.  Hoping to see everyone in person for ISTE 2021, to be held in San Antonio, Texas in June.

**Interested in writing a guest blog for my site? Would love to share your ideas! Submit your post here.

Looking for a new book to read? Many stories from educators, two student chapters, and a student-designed cover for In Other Words.

Find these available at bit.ly/Pothbooks