Online words that drape and fall on empty chairs

So, we have a year group off school isolating which means their lessons have to be provided remotely. School policy is that we do that from our classrooms using Teams (don’t get me started – if I never see the colour purple again it’ll be too soon). This isn’t a blog about the rights and wrongs of teaching this way, because this is the way we have to do it, it’s more about the mechanics of how I do it. There is a longer discussion to be had about online learning vs online teaching and about what either should look like. The time to do that is not now. I have two groups of students for whom I need to maintain routines and help provide some structure for. So, these few paragraphs are simply about how I utilise the technology available to me to do that.

First let me say this: I am a kinaesthetic teacher. I move around the classroom. I teach at the board. I do sit down occasionally to use a visualiser, but I don’t enjoy it. I have become, and this will surprise regular readers, rather dependant on my IWB. There, I’ve said it. PowerPoint plus in-class mark-up and latterly OneNote plus in-class mark-up (and use of the spectacularly useful Maths functionality) is my thing. So whilst recognising that simple replication of what happens in the classroom does not always make for the best online learning my first thought was “How do I replicate what currently happens in my classroom.” And I thought this for good reason. My rationale is that the more familiar I can make the experience for students (for those small number of lessons) then the easier it would be for them to follow what was happening. If they see on their screen what they would usually see when looking towards the front of the classroom then I felt that would be beneficial.

The narrative below glides over any issues of digital inequality. This is not because I believe it is unimportant or that it doesn’t exist in my students. It is simply because this is about how I’m working in the classroom. You have to accept my assurances that we work extremely hard to ensure that where there is such inequality we are trying to tackle it. I’m also aware that there are issues (and a degree of hypocrisy) over the amount of screen time we are asking these young people to engage in. I’m content in my own mind that for the short period we are working this way that the approach we are taking is, on balance, less harmful than any other we could. And again, individual circumstances are taken into consideration.

So here’s how I teach those lessons.

We open a Teams meeting. Only I can present, so no-one can mute me, but students can unmute themselves. I’ll come back to this.

I share the second screen (the screen that’s usually projected in class). This will have either a PowerPoint prepared for the lesson or will be a blank OneNote page I can scribble write on.

I mute the mic on the laptop and mute the speakers. I then join the class on my mobile phone using the Teams app. This allows me to use a set of earphones to hear and speak through by carrying the phone around the room with me. This frees me to teach as I usually would. I can see the chat on the phone.

There is a welcome in the chat to all students, reminding them of the protocols and of the focus for the lesson. They are also reminded that I expect an image from their exercise books uploaded at the end of the lesson.

Students join the meeting at the usual lesson start time. They are usually prompt.

We chat a bit, ask some questions, make sure I engage with those students who I’d suspect would find the isolation difficult. 

Then I teach. I display the slides. I annotate the slides. Students can ask questions in the chat, which my watch notifies me of, and I can see on the phone I’m holding in my hand. I ask specific students questions. If I ask them a question, then they know that is me giving tacit permission for them to unmute and answer.

I break the lesson down into even smaller chunks than I usually would. I check understanding even more often that I usually would. All of which is making me ask myself if I shouldn’t do that even more often when they’re in the room.

Another question I’m asking myself is this. Online, I can’t see them fidgeting. Should I be ignoring more of that in the classroom to avoid unnecessary breaks in teaching. The question I’m asking myself is this one – are some student behaviours irritating just me rather than distracting the whole class? My jury is out on that one at the moment.

Our protocol is to teach for maybe 20-30 minutes and then provide students with sufficient to do to keep them occupied (you know what I mean) for the rest of the (one hour) lesson, whilst giving them time to log off and prepare for their next lesson. During this time students know I’m still online in the lesson to answer any questions. This is akin to a silent working section of a lesson.

At the end I expect them to upload an image of their work in response to an assignment set for the lesson.

This approach enables me to keep as many of the benefits of teaching in the classroom as I can. I obviously cannot be sure that students aren’t simply logging in on a PC or their phone whilst playing on their X-Box at the same time, though regular questioning does help allay this fear. But being able to work in much the same way as I do in the classroom does reduce any workload implications for me and I think the continuity does help the students.

What would I like to improve? Well I would like to try and get a picture-in-picture of me at the board, not out of any sense of vanity but again, to provide a familiarity for the students. I’d also like to use Airpods rather than a wired earphone set to avoid having to carry the phone all the time. What would really be good is Airpods linked to an iPad that I could put in a holder next to the IWB. Then I could more easily see the chat when I get a notification on my watch.

So that’s what I do. Hope it helps someone.