Reflecting on the Learning from Home experience

Reflection is a important aspect of teaching and learning and helps us improve our teaching practice. 

Term 4 is very busy with assessment and reporting, however, we have had a profound experience over the last 15 weeks and it is important to consider the good things that happened during learning from home and how we may be able to incorporate this into our face to face teaching.

This is what is called a blended approach to teaching and learning. It is not about the tool you use, more ever how the technology amplifies or transforms the learning outcomes.

I have framed some this blog post with the CESE document: What works best 2020 update (click here).
The following are some areas and questions to consider while you reflect on your experiences of teaching online.

Explicit teaching

Google Classroom

• All teachers used learning intentions and success criteria in their Google Classroom and this allowed flexibility for students who were not in class or sick on the day.
• You may like to continue to add these into your virtual classroom and project on the whiteboard in the classroom for each lesson?

Online Whiteboards

• The use of online whiteboards like Google Jam board and Microsoft Whiteboard allow for you to explicitly teach by using diagrams, digital inking and the ability to save back into your virtual classroom.
• This could continue so there is a record of your lessons for students who were away.

Explicit instructions

• Due to the nature of online learning we had to use more class prompts and explicit language to communicate learning activities.
• Will you continue to place explicit instructions in your virtual classroom?

Assessment

Summative

• We had to think of alternative forms of assessment and adapt them for the online environment (how did this go and what elements could you continue using?)
• Did you use online forms to break down exams into multiple choice and short answer?
  
• How did this go and could you use elements of this for self-marking quizzes?
• How did online submission go and will you continue this for all tasks or just some tasks?

Formative
Self-marking quizzes (Google and Microsoft)

• Did you use quick self-marking quizzes in your daily practice? (These can be an easy way to use assessment data to inform your teaching for each lesson.
• What other tools did you use for quick quizzes (e.g. Kahoot, Quizlet, Menti meter).  Could you use these in your everyday practice?

Entry and exit tickets

• Digital entry or exit tickets using Forms is a great way to gain a snapshot of learning for the day.
• Did you use digital entry or exit tickets and will you continue using these digitally? 

Effective feedback

Using rubrics and comments in Google Classroom

• How did you use the comments function and marking rubrics in GC
  
• Did this make marking more efficient and will you continue this?

Using comments in Google Docs and Microsoft Word

• By having documents in an assignment link you are able to add comments to give students ongoing feedback and interact with them. Is this something you could continue to do digitally?
• With the new windows image on the staff laptop you can draw and annotate all over a word document using the draw function. How could you change the way you give written feedback?

Voice comments with Mote, Onenote

• The use of voice comments can make the online learning feedback faster and easier for teacher and student. How could you use this with face to face teaching?

Collaboration and communication

Staff

• How did you work with colleagues during learning from home?
• Which online collaboration platforms did you use?
• What collaboration platforms could you continue to use streamline collaboration in and out of school hours?

Student
Communicating within your virtual classroom

• How did you communicate with students via your online classroom?
• Did this add more flexibility for you and your students?
• How could you use this instead of email (if you used this mode of communication) as the means to communicate with students outside of the usual class period?

Using tools to co create learning

• The use of Google Slides and PowerPoint added as an assignment allows all students to work on the same presentation or document. How did this go in your classroom? Could you use this as an approach for future face to face lessons?

Online collaboration boards

• The use of online collaboration boards e.g. Padlet allowed students to work together , share ideas and be saved to the virtual classroom. Do you think you could use these as an activity in your classroom?

Online surveys using Google/ Microsoft forms

• The use of forms is a great way for students to share ideas and posted back to the virtual classroom. Will you continue using this approach 

Other programs

• What other programs have you used to give feedback digitally?

Student directed autonomy

• Did you create virtual projects which built around key concepts or units for students during online learning?
• Did you use assessment tasks for "assessment as and of" learning using digital tools for delivery.
• Did this improve students autonomy and how did you support them in the online environment?
• Could you use this these tasks/ projects as a blended approach to teaching and learning to improve student autonomy?

If you need more help with the use of different tools to improve teaching and learning for blended learning go to the "creating online learning environments" page and have a look at the videos and resources for creating class engagement, collaborative activities and feed back throughout the learning process section.

Thank you to all the staff at Killara High School for your herculean effort, passion and dedication to ensure our students continued to learn effectively in the online environment.