Whether you are in full-blown remote learning, a hybrid, or back in the classroom, remote learning is still fully on your mind. You might be back, but there is no telling if you will have to go remote again. The one thing we have learned from COVD is it's unforgiving and there is no telling when it will strike.

     The key to being ready is being able to transition quickly, and here are a couple of tips that I learned over many years to make that happen.

1. If you don't have some type of LMS, get one

​     Personally, I would rather build my own site, but that’s too much to ask of any teacher. It’s especially too much when you consider there are so many good options for an LMS out there in today’s education world. There are great paid services like Schoology and Canvas, and then there are services that come with systems you already have like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. There are even ones that aren’t as popular anymore but will get the job done because they have loads of experience like Blackboard and Edmodo. 
​     The key with an LMS is that it gives the kids a place to go if they are stuck, can’t find something, or just don’t know what to do. It’s something that is beneficial no matter if they are at home or at school, and it takes away a good deal of stress on the teacher. If a kid can’t find something, it gives you a place to send them. It takes away some of the stress associated with organization because it is always there. It also makes personalization a whole lot easier because it’s just a matter of organizing links rather than printing off hundreds of copies.

1.      If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it’s the importance of this system. It gives you a place to fall back on if all the sudden schools closed or they are quarantined. You can make that shift quick because the kids already know, you can communicate with them there, and you can give them the right amount of feedback.

If you don’t have this set up already, there are steps you can take. The first is to connect with the district. They may have a system in place but are just in the beginning stages of rolling it out. You can always volunteer to be the pioneer. If there is no system in place, it does not mean you are out of luck though. If you have Microsoft or Google, you can use Teams or Classroom. They aren’t always the most robust platforms, but they will do the trick.

1. Cut down on CLICKS

    I think teachers miss this one. When you are creating a digital platform for your students to interact with, you need to think like a designer. One of the ideals to live by is that the more clicks it takes, the harder it is going to be to find. An LMS is not always going to make this easy. Typically, they are built in a general way, so they don’t necessarily take this into account for every grade level. This is where the teacher comes in.
    My own kid’s district is a perfect example of this. They built there own LMS (see my blog from last week on that discussion), and it integrates directly with Zoom. It’s built-in a class by class format with tiles to ensure that middle school and high school classes can shift from class to class. The issue is that they are trying to make elementary do the same thing, and it’s causes confusion.
    Don’t get me wrong, there are reasons to switch class at the elementary level. They have to do it for specials, but I really don’t understand why they need to do it for the different subject areas that their teacher of record teaches during the day. Yes, they make those shifts in person, but when you do it with technology, it’s more clicks. It means kids have gotten lost, it’s harder to find resources, and it’s actually tough on the teacher because they are managing multiple Zoom’s. If they had gone in with the designer mindset, this system would have worked much better.

1. Be ORGANIZED!

    This tip makes sense right? It’s just not the easiest to fully carry out. Over my years as a tech coach, I have seen many online spaces that were a bit of a mess. They are filled with links, resources that aren’t categorized, and just random announcement messages. I think it makes things easier if you have a system of organization that you stick by. Think of it in the same way as classroom procedures.
    Personally, I prefer to see two formats. I love formats that are in tiles. I think that image-based organization gives kids the visual representation that some of them need, and it also limits the instincts to post a good deal of text which can muddy a class online space quickly. Two good places to start are Symbaloo and Wakelet. Both have HTML embed codes which means you can put them almost anywhere.
    The other way IO like to see is categorized lists and bullets. It’s a bit more visually appealing and it means that students can find the right topic rather than just sorting through a giant list of assignments. You can either go about this with a text editor or if your in something like Google Classroom you can use topics. Just think, if you use this space long term will kids be able to find stuff at the end?

1. Use a URL shortener!

    This is way more important than you think. You want to give kids every opportunity you can give them to get to the right link, and sometimes it might take typing stuff in. It also goes back to the organization piece. If you have long URL’s, it’s easy to muck up your organization, and it becomes much tougher to format. All this really takes is copy and paste, so it should not even add much work.
    Typically, when I use a shortener, I use bit.ly. I think bit.ly just has an easy format that takes me only a couple of extra seconds to do, and if you want to get really crazy you can even customize the address. I think customizing the wording after the \ makes it even easier on people, and I try to keep it lower case since this is case sensitive. This becomes especially handy with long URL’s like Google Docs and Forms.

1. Be cognizant of formatting, and give tips to overcome

    I think it’s time that teachers realize that not every household is going to use the same accounts and devices that the school does or wants to be used. I think there is a raging debate in this realm between the Google Office Suite and the Microsoft Office Suite with Apple stuff thrown in, and teachers really need to accommodate for all of them. The safest way to do that is through PDF’s.
    I have seen this first hand with my own kids. My kid’s district is a Microsoft district, and there have been several teachers who have said they won’t even accept Google formatting. I find this puzzling considering, they have still done the assignment. It’s a good learning experience for my kids because I can help them convert and work in both, but I worry about parents who may not have the experience I have. Their kids may be tied to a device, and formatting that works best on that should never be an issue.
    It’s why PDFs are always safe. All three of the Office suites can open PDF’s, and there are plenty of PDF editors out there that can make this work. Kami is a real good one. I also think PDF’s give the best-formatted version to print if needed. It gives kids the most options.

     So, I just got the decision of what school looks like for my kids as they come back to school in the fall, and it’s really missing something. The district that they are in has told parents that kids can either return as normal with social distancing practices in the fall or go all virtual. The worst part of it though is that we as parents have to make that decision by July 10. There is no middle ground. There is no hybrid approach. With where we are with this virus, how can we really make an informed decision? 
    I have so many things to consider here. To start, I am working with two different age groups that have two different needs. I have a son who will be going into second grade, but
I also have two daughters in middle school. I am not going to lie and say virtual learning for my son was easy. He is one of those little boys who typically bounces off every wall in a room, and his teachers have always been able to get more out of him academically than my wife and I have when trying to do things at home. He needs school. He needs that structured environment, but what will that even look like? Is requiring 2nd graders to wear a mask, sit in the same seat all day long, and not do anything collaboratively even effective?  If he is just going to just sit at his desk all day and do worksheets, I think it may be more effective to keep him here, but it really is an impossible choice.
    For my middle school girls, I think in-person instruction is important, but I think they can still get effective instruction in a digital format. My big question is what value does going to school have for them? It’s all going to be about what the instruction actually looks like. Are they going to be able to move around and collaborate? Are they going to be doing the exact same things they can get online? Will the social distancing guidelines implemented be so miserable that they will actually be happier at home? Without an idea of what instruction looks like, how can I possibly answer these questions?
    I think the other thing that we have to weigh fully here is the health and safety of teachers. Do you know one of the first things that happened in the metro Atlanta area to make school closures a real possibility? It was a teacher collapsing because of COVID complications in a South Fulton school, and guess what? If it happens again, I think we are right back where we started with remote instruction. Will kids who were in person, be able to transition quickly? I have my doubts. I think this also is going to factor in the quality of the online instruction because of this. Naturally, my first thought is that all the best tech-savvy teachers would be the ones who pursue the online route. I think it’s more likely that it’s the ones where health is an issue whether they are ready or not.
    On top of all this, how in the heck are we supposed to make this decision with the trends that are happening with the virus as a whole in the Southeast? It’s climbing past levels that got us here in the first place, and unless people start really adhering to health professionals’ guidelines, it’s likely to climb even further. A perfect example: masks. The governor of Georgia and Mayor of Atlanta came out today and asked people to wear masks. Do you know how many I really see when I go to the grocery store? It’s less than 50%. How am I supposed to make an all or nothing decision with that? It’s likely the virus is just going to be a worse problem without major intervention, but do we really think that is coming?
    With all those factors, it brings me back to a hybrid. I want my kids to go back to school. I need them to go back to school, but why can’t they go part-time? My wife actually works for a church with a school attached, and I think that school has the perfect model. Split each school into 2 halves, Team A and Team B. You could do it by grade level or some other factor. Have team A come Monday and Tuesday, deep clean Wednesday, and then have team B come Thursday and Friday. The rest of the time students move to virtual instruction. It gives kids both and it also gives janitorial staff the time to make sure cleaning is actually done right. It also puts me as a parent in a position I am comfortable with. Cobb County Schools, I hope you consider it!

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       Student creation is about more than just creating to create. You should want to create for a purpose. You should want to create for understanding and meaning. You should want to create to make the world a better place, and it all starts by building a scenario for the creation. Scenarios should always be your starting place.
      What do I mean by that? I see student projects all the time that are “just create something about the topic.” That topic could be anything, but what the teacher is going to get is always the same: bad power points and bad videos. What if you actually made them create for an audience? What if you made them solve a real-world problem? You could get more than just bad tech tools with regurgitated information. 
      To me, this takes me back to my days in the Social Studies classroom. In Social Studies, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of just having kids do a presentation to regurgitate information You have seen them a million times. They tend to have bad backgrounds, arguably plagiarized text, and images that just look weird. I thought there had to be more, and what I came to is that there had to be a scenario to create to. Instead of just giving them a topic, I gave them an audience. I put them in the history. They had to critically think like the people they were studying and like they were there.
      Does this sound hard? Well, it isn’t. There are thousands of scenarios you could use in any topic, but I found one that was always a good starting place if I got stuck: The United Nations. Think about it, they have a hand in everything. They work with plenty of data to tie math in. They are worried about the planet which ties in Science, and they are involved in politics which ties in Social Studies. With ELA, you can adapt grammar and writing projects to almost anything. It means you can have all four CORE subjects covered in one audience.
       The UN has even made it easier. They have published a set of 17 goals that they have for the planet by 2030. These are a great starting place! It sums up the world's problems beautifully and gives you a great place for kids to start solving them. There is also a massive teaching community around them, so you don’t even have to create all of the activities yourself!
      These can even be used for coding scenarios, and Tynker has done just that. Check out the Hour of Code projects based on the SDG's at https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/

      This blog is for my friend the Social Studies teacher. Many times your the red-headed stepchild of the core content group, but if we can take anything from the current state of affairs, you are so important. You might be the last ones to get new standards, but you are going to be the first ones that kids actually use coming straight out of high school. 
      This isn't to say the others aren't important, but think of the first ways someone can participate in the greater society. It's things like registering to vote, registering for selective service, and getting into the federal student loans program. All of them are things that may need advocacy, and we have to teach our students to advocate and participate.
     No matter what you believe with the current state of the US government the abundantly clear thing is that we need to do an even better job of teaching civics. The impeachment inquiry is s a perfect example of this. It's clear that many Americans don't fully understand that process, and that lack of understanding is helping both sides manipulate both the process and messaging with it.
      We are constantly hearing a lot about the process. The thing to understand though is that the process right now is like a grand jury. It's about finding enough evidence to see if you can take it to trial, but because it's already being tried in the public conscious people think that things should look like a full trial. That's the not the way things are laid out in the constitution, yet many Americans don't realize that. It allows both sides to manipulate the message to benefit their point of view.
      We hear the argument of fake news and bias all the time. In reality, it's there on both sides of the argument. The problem we are all having is that we aren't teaching civics well enough which makes it almost impossible for folks to decipher what is real and fake. We have to keep up that fight because in an age of endless media, knowing civics is the only thing that will let you know what is real and true.
         We are getting to a point where teaching civics is going to be the only thing that saves us. The old saying ignorance is bliss does not apply here. If you don't know how things work you just can't decipher through the noise.
​         Civics Teachers: Keep up the fight! You don't know how important you are!