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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Sharing Your Story

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We all have a story to tell. In fact, we all have a story to tell to inspire others. When I tell others that they should tweet or blog, I get a lot of…

  • I don’t do anything innovative.
  • What I do is nothing new.
  • Nobody is interested in what I have to say.

I completely disagree with those statements. We all do great things and the world can benefit from reading or seeing those great things. Just last week, I am reminded of this again.

It was brought to my attention that Wanda Terral gave a presentation in Texas a couple of weeks ago at TCEA on Google’s Data Studio tool. In Wanda’s presentation, she shared different ways in which people used Data Studio to help give attendees an idea of what is possible. My example happened to be one of those examples.

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Slide from Wanda’s Presentation

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Station Rotations

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(Excited that Jess Gilcreast is a co-blog post writer for this post)

Station Rotations: A way to move from teacher lead learning to student lead learning. Our high school has 77 minute blocks. Students don’t want to listen to teachers talk the entire time and teachers don’t necessarily want to deliver content to students for the entire time either. 

Jess Gilcreast, high school librarian, and I have been working with humanities teachers to re-think how to deliver introduction content for a particular unit. Below you will find resources and activities that were completed in a sophomore humanities course. We are both very proud of what was accomplished.

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Design Think with Computer Science Week

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As you probably already know, code.org puts on the Hour of Code week each December in hopes of students and teachers spending a bit a time during the week coding. While students and teachers at my school have participated to some degree for the past couple of years, it was not until the 19-20 school year where we truly highlighted Computer Science week – with big thanks to Stefan Fritz and his Computer Science students. Very proud with what they were able to put together. Below will highlight what was accomplished and the journey that it took to get to where we are.

Coming Up with the Idea

Back in May 2019, I attended a Forward: Massachusetts event at Google Cambridge. Google invited Leslie McBeth and Diane Rutherford, from Future Design Schools, to help school leaders and educators dive deep into ideas/concepts that they would like to see changed back at their own school buildings. Leslie and Diane walked us through their Design Thinking process. I absolutely loved the process. It was challenging, exciting, stressful, insightful and fun. What I appreciated about the process was the ability to come up with ideas and think things through. My take away? Empathy! In order to make positive change, you must fully empathize with those involved.

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