We know our learners respond to engaging content and media while online. This page will provide you some ideas and suggestions to consider as you develop content for your course(s) while school may be closed.
Screen Casting with Quicktime Player
Screencasts are a great way to share content with students, while incorporating personalised audio instructions.
The tutorial below takes you through how to create a screen recording (with mouse-clicks and audio) to share with your students. Perfect for giving personalised instructions, having students reflect on work created, or showing a procedure on a website.
Discussions with FlipGrid
Responding to a prompt or justifying opinions or statements are some of the ways we can use asynchronous video-based discussions with our students.
Flipgrid is a fantastic tool for a whole host of video-based contexts. Create a grid, add a prompt and invite students to respond to the prompt via video. They can watch each other's responses and comment on those as well.
To get a free account, log in with your Microsoft account. Details in the link above.
Post & Respond with Padlet
Padlet enables you to create beautiful pin boards, documents, flow-charts and webpages that are visual, easy to read and fun to respond to.
WAB subscribes to Padlet Backpack, meaning teachers and students get unlimited Padlets.
Students can upload a range of content, including video and audio files, and commenting (and comment moderation) can be enabled.
Start the video below at minute 2:05 to learn about how to use Padlet Backpack.
Newsela
We are lucky to have a subscription to Newsela, which has over 10,000 texts at 5 different reading levels - perfect for ensuring our content is accessible to all our learners.
Newsela has a huge range of texts, including - but not limited to - specialised texts for Science and Math, Art & Culture, and Religion and Philosophy (see below for categories).
The Newsela Educator Centre takes you step-by-step through how to set up classes, create text sets, assignments and make the most of the features Newsela has to offer.
Your Librarian or Learning Coach would be happy to help you get started :)
Videos
One way to keep your students engaged is to video your instructions. I am well aware that many educators shy away from appearing on screen themselves, but research indicates that students prefer when they get to see their teacher onscreen, and in the case of video explanations, retain information more easily.
As mentors, we know the importance of maintaining positive relationships with our students. Why not record a little message for your students from wherever you are in the world over break, to let them know you are thinking of them and will be making sure they're all set for some fabulous online learning after the break?
Virtual Classrooms
Whether you use a Learning Management System (such as Moodle) or other virtual classrooms (such as Microsoft Teams), organising your content and sharing expectations with your students needs to be clear and easy to navigate.
At WAB, Moodle is a student's first port of call when accessing their lesson content. Links can be placed there to guide students to lessons/materials elsewhere.
Microsoft Teams has had a number of updates recently that are making it a tool of choice for many China-based International Schools. Each Team created comes with a Posts tab (like a discussion forum), a Class Notebook (linked to OneNote), a SharePoint folder, an Assignments tab and a tab for Grades. It also has video conferencing & screencasting capabilities, which allow for some more dynamic content to be shared.
Teams can be accessed via web, phone app or iPad/tablet app. Download from Self Service (WAB teachers/students), or log in with your Microsoft account online to get started.
Reinforcing Skills
We also need to support students in skill-development via distance. Education Perfect has high quality resources for the majority of subjects, including, but not limited to:
- History
- Maths
- EAL
- English Language & Literature
- Science
- Chinese
- Spanish
- French
- Health & PE
Smart Lessons can be assigned, or teachers can create their own pathways. A wealth of data is provided on student interaction and progress, which will make personalised learning much easier to support.
WAB teachers, log in with your school email address to make the most of our subscription.
Podcasts
With our students on the move, tapping into the wealth of incredible resources available in the form of podcasts on nearly every topic imaginable makes so much sense.
Assigning a podcast episode or series to listen to, followed by a response (video/post/discussion forum) can be a powerful way to access learning in new ways.
By way of example, a combined TOK & English Language & Literature class might explore the Serial Podcast, and investigate some related articles to explore ethics. Resources kindly contributed by Tricia Friedman.
Middle Schoolers might listen to episodes from the podcast This I Believe before writing and recording their own episode (as developed by Nathan Lill & Ceci Gomez-Galvez). Details on the above project can be found here, along with other great podcasts for Middle Schoolers.
Combine the idea of listening to a podcast, with going for a walk or run outside to promote exercise - killing two birds with one stone.
Credits:
Created with images by Mimi Thian - "untitled image" • Charles - "Design meeting" • Harry Cunningham - "Instagram: @harry.digital Model: @Sergio_snaps" • Huỳnh Tấn Hậu - "Phone" • Michael Oeser - "untitled image"