Tips and Tricks for Virtual Instruction

 As we navigate this year and determine how best to serve our students, one thing is certain - the elements of effective instruction are the same in the online environment, with some small tweaks to accommodate the necessity of technology to make it happen.  With that in mind, here are some small tips and tricks, some interesting tidbits, and some resources worthy of passing along.

1. Email apnea is an interesting phenomena resulting from shallow breathing when seated in front of a screen.  It causes quite a lot of physical reactions by our body that make us feel worse because we are actually holding our breath while reading our email.  By being aware of this, we can proactively seek to remedy it by reminding ourselves to breathe, taking necessary breaks, and relaxing our eyes.  You can read more about it here.

2. Being in an online environment changes the way in which we conduct formative assessment.  Since we are on videoconferencing software, it can be tempting to ask for verbal responses from our students, but that can be time consuming with a large group.  Instead, two ideas are "flood the chat" and "waterfall chat".  Flood the chat is the idea of having students type multiple answers to a prompt in the chat so the chat is full of ideas.  Waterfall chat is having students type in an answer but not hitting send, then counting down from 3 and when you say go, they all hit send and it fills the chat with a waterfall of answers.

3. As I mentioned in an email after the Elementary and Secondary Technology Conferences, Jamboard is a newer resource from Google that can be leveraged in your classes.  This wakelet is a great place to start finding templates for Jamboard to make it more interactive too.  I like the Pros and Cons one where students fill in the post-its with ideas.

What have you learned this year that is worth sharing with others outside your department or your grade level team?  I'd love to hear from you.