Remote Learning – Craig M Sheil

Yes to a Portable Monitor

Teachers sure have had to adapt quickly during this pandemic. Just the logistics alone. Never thought it would ever be a thing in my lifetime where a teacher would be required to teach students remotely or through a hybrid setting. I give them lots of praise for all that they have been able to accomplish. It isn’t easy.

Teaching 25-30 students on an 11 inch screen is just not enough real-estate when you have to talk to students, share a screen, do attendance, check email etc. I could go on and on and on. We also knew that there probably would be times where teachers had to teach from home. We wanted the flexibility of teachers being able to have a second monitor where ever they were (our teachers also don’t have their own classrooms).

We wanted to get teachers a monitor. However, we wanted to think different. We wanted to think 3-5 years from now and didn’t want to just buy the first monitor that we found. We wanted to think different. After doing some research, we decided we should purchase portable monitors that could be easily set up in any setting, instead of getting a desktop monitor that would only live in the classroom. The model that we purchased was: AOC e1659FWU 16″ LED USB Powered Portable Monitor with
case.

Welcoming Attendees to a Google Meet

I was good at remembering how many weeks we have been teaching remotely, but once we hit the double digits, I started to loose track. I think we must either be on week 10 or 11 by now. Never did I expect to be out for this long. I remember joining in on a webinar, back in late March, listening to teachers from overseas and how they had already been teaching remotely for 10 weeks. At that time, it was only week 2 for me. I thought, “wow, hope we won’t be in that situation!” Well, here we are.

For this blog post, I wanted to highlight how you could kick it up a notch when welcoming attendees to a Google Meet. By now, we all have either been participants or attendees of virtual meetings, conversations, lessons or webinars. It has become our new normal whether we like it or not.

Well, two weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to participate in a two part training series that Google put on for Google for Education Certified Trainers. Google had members of Future Design Schools deliver the training. We were exposed to ways in how we can support our colleagues using G-Suite tools with students in a remote setting in addition to how we could think about assessment differently. In a future blog post, I will address this more. However, what I really want to highlight right now is how I was welcomed in the Google Meet.

Week 5 of Remote Learning – Learning from Students

Well, time got away from me. I started strong with writing a blog post for the first two weeks of remote learning. Some how time didn’t allow me the opportunity to make the trend happen, weird huh? Lots of learning has happened over the past five weeks. This week, I would like to highlight something that I learned from a student.

Our principal shared with the staff that an instagram account was created in an effort to highlight our graduating senior class. It is so hard to be in this situation that we are all in. Hard for the graduates. Hard for the senior advisory teachers. Hard for the staff that are retiring this year. On this instagram account, each post highlights a different graduating senior with what they are planning on doing after they graduate. What a cool idea.

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Week 2 of Remote Learning – Keyboard Shortcuts

Many educators and students in New England are now experiencing their second week of remote learning. It’s been an adventure for sure. Now that most of the communication is happening solely online, I have found myself using more and more keyboard shortcuts. I am still the mouse user (I know that that this is a rarity, but it is true), but I have been trying to force myself to use more keyboard shortcuts to help save time. Think about all the clicks and dragging on a trackpad or mouse you do in a day. Think of all the seconds that it takes out of your day. Now add that up throughout the week. It becomes a substantial amount of time. Below are some helpful keyboard shortcuts that you might find useful.

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Week 1 of #RemoteLearning

My Post

Wow! What a crazy time we are in right now. If you would have told me nine years ago when I started as a Digital Learning Specialist that we would move an entire school online in a two week period, I would have told you you were crazy. It is hard to put into words the experience. Very fortunate that we were given a full week to prepare for remote learning. As I write this blog post, we are ending our first full week.

Throughout the week, I have realized (and re-realized) a couple of things:

It is amazing at how different life is right now. I miss seeing my colleagues in person – there is something about waving hi, seeing how people are doing, co-planning with them. Sure a Google Meet is happening from time to time, but it is just not the same.
Our tech team in the district is very hard working and takes their roles very seriously with regards to making sure that the best experience is available for the entire BSD community.
Our teachers are willing and able to step up to challenges that are in front of them. Switching to remote learning is not a small feat by any means. It doesn’t matter how skilled or knowledgeable you are with technology. This is a lot of work for all staff. Meaningful activities to use? Screencasts to make or other video resources to use? Pacing? Lots and lots of ideas and questions are going through the minds of staff. Staff are wanting to make activities meaningful while being mindful that you can’t just do the same thing online.

Below are two ahas that happened in the first week that I would like to highlight:

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