The 12 Shifts for Student-Centered Hybrid Environments — from gettingsmart.com by Kyle Wagner

During the time of remote learning, our students have become more independent and empowered. They have been given more freedom in establishing their own learning outcomes, and organizing schedules and deadlines to meet them. When they return to us in the fall, whether for an in-person, hybrid, or a 100% online learning experience, we will have to offer them something different than we have in the past. Instead of disconnected, impersonalized, one-size-fits-all learning, we will need to offer our students deep, personalized, and more connected learning experiences.

Our role as a result will shift from being the ‘sage on stage,’ to a ‘facilitator of learning experiences.’ To make this transformation possible, we will have to make 12 key shifts.

The 12 shifts are the result of conversations and insights from expert practitioners worldwide, who have not only adapted to an uncertain education climate, but thrived.

The 12 Shifts for Student-Centered Hybrid Environments

From DSC:
This was a great article with numerous solid ideas and suggestions! What I saw several times was offering the students more choice, more control. In fact, the point hit close to home. Our son finally said, “I actually want to learn this stuff!” (i.e., how to act and thrive within the world of the theatre). When we’re able to tap into students’ intrinsic motivation, we unleash a *huge* amount of creativity,  energy, and effort!!!

 

Surveys: Most teachers don’t want in-person instruction, fear COVID-19 health risks — from blogs.edweek.org by Madeline Will

Excerpts:

Teachers are more likely than administrators to express concerns about returning to school. The vast majorities of school leaders (96 percent) and district leaders (90 percent) say they are willing to return to their school building for in-person instruction, compared to 81 percent of teachers.

Also, teachers of color are more likely than white teachers to be concerned about going back into the classroom. Just 35 percent of teachers of color say there should be in-person instruction this fall, compared to 47 percent of white teachers. Eighty-three percent of white teachers said they’re willing to go back into school buildings, compared to 66 percent of teachers of color.

Those are some of the key findings from a nationally representative online survey by the EdWeek Research Center. The survey was conducted July 22-23, and 1,366 educators responded—873 teachers, 251 principals, and 242 district leaders.

Also see:

 

Pedagogical considerations for instructional videoconferencing sessions — from onlinelearningconsortium.org by Amanda Major

Excerpt:

Presented here are recommendations and strategies to support educators.

We hope you find these pedagogical considerations for faculty holding a synchronous class session via a video conferencing tool as timely, practical, and rewarding. The intent is to allay your anxieties about offering quality instruction to your students; thereby, helping you to adapt quickly to this new situation.

The ending points of your content delivery should make a lasting impression. Try these ideas:

    • Wrap-up your session with a Parking Lot designed as a quadrant (see below), use a shared document and include the following quadrant headings/questions so students can respond in real time:

 


 

 


 

Also see the idea of a learning journal here.

Have the students keep a learning journal, while answering these questions each week

 

 

What should schools, colleges and Universities do in September? …7 actions — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Excerpts:

Let me start with a tough question. Weighing your wish to return to schools or campuses, given the current surge of Covid cases, is the return to the classroom or chasing the cash worth a single dead student, teacher or parent? Or should we see the September return as an opportunity to change things for the better and by that I mean for teachers, lecturers, students and parents? We need a reset.

Necessity is the mother of invention. I hope that this human tragedy allows us to transform the learning landscape to be better and more inclusive through Blended Learning. We have an opportunity to use contemporary technology to reduce teacher workload and improve learning at the same time.

 

A few creative ways to use student blogs — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

Excerpt:

Since those early days the blog has really evolved as a genre: People have taken the basic framework of the blog and used it to build all kinds of useful, interesting things online. This evolution has given the blog limitless potential as a form of writing, and that’s just as true for student writers as it is for everyone else. So if you’re looking for a nice, meaty assignment, one that in previous decades might have been a research paper or an oral presentation, consider assigning a blog instead. It’s not only a highly relevant form of writing, but because it’s done entirely online and worked on over time, it would also lend itself beautifully to remote or hybrid learning.

blog is part of a larger website, and what makes it unique is that it is dynamic. It changes. It’s regularly updated to provide new material

 

Florida educators file lawsuit to protect health and well-being of students, educators and communities — from feaweb.org, with thanks to Staci Maiers for this resource

Excerpt:

TALLAHASSEE — Along with educators and parents, the Florida Education Association filed suit Monday against Gov. Ron DeSantis, Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education, the Florida State Board of Education and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez to safeguard the health and welfare of public school students, educators and the community at large. The lawsuit intends to stop the reckless and unsafe reopening of public school campuses as coronavirus infections surge statewide.

Also see:

 
 

Check out Adobe for Education on Youtube for some great resources to learn everything from podcasting to making impactful social media videos — from jeadigitalmedia.org by Aaron Manfull

Excerpt:

We’ve got a list of Adobe tutorials from the web we’ve been curating here and we’ve long advocated for using Lynda/Linkedin Learning for students and advisers to learn programs. Let’s add one more great resource into the mix and that’s Adobe’s “Adobe for Education” channel on Youtube.

One example:

 

20 formative assessment examples to use in your online classroom — from tophat.com
Informal assessments are an easy way to stay connected with your students and understand their progress in your course

Excerpt:

As learning environments evolve to incorporate online and remote learning, so too has the need for different approaches that provide flexibility in assessing students in-class, online or in blended learning environments. The following examples of formative assessment techniques can not only help you share more regular, reliable and useful feedback on student progress, they can also help you get started in thinking of other formative assessment strategies to incorporate into your lesson plans.

 

Welcome to Three-Minute Ed Talks, where educators from across the globe are invited to share an insight, a teaching strategy, or an invaluable lesson you learned during the rapid transition to online learning. Your challenge is to do it in just three minutes. Three-Minute Ed Talks are part of the month-long Second Wave Summit on reopening schools and universities and preparing for “the new normal.” Do you have a powerful idea for a Three-Minute Ed Talk? See how to make a submission here.

From DSC:
I remember being at a conference years ago when the Instructional Designer from a library spoke about doing “lightning rounds” with faculty members. The faculty member would record a 3-5 minute presentation about their idea/experiment and what problem they were trying to solve. They reported on whether the pedagogy worked or whether it didn’t work as planned. Great call me thinks!

Besides teachers and professors, trainers could do this with each other. So could those involved in homeschooling. 

 

From DSC:
Thanks Tony for this item. I was trying to think of how to do this just the other day…so I’m a bit late in posting this, but better late than never, heh?

 

Teachers at high risk for COVID-19 face a terrible choice: Your job or your health — from edsurge.com by Stephen Noonoo

Excerpt:

Yet a majority of teachers aren’t sold, due to poor guidance from state and district administrators and few realistic ways to achieve social distancing on school buses and in crowded classrooms that were overspilling with students even before schools closed in March. On social media and in interviews, they cite health concerns and age—about 30 percent of teachers are over age 50—as well as the disastrous school reopenings in Israel that reportedly contributed to a surge of new cases.

 

As school year approaches, parents and educators struggle with uncertainty — from kqed.org by Anya Kamenetz

Excerpt:

What’s at stake: An unknown number of lives, the futures of tens of millions of children, the livelihoods of their caregivers, the working conditions of millions of educators and people’s trust in a fundamental American institution.

 

Best practices for engaging students online — from edtechmagazine.com by Amelia Pang
Norma I. Scagnoli, a higher education instructional design expert, shares her advice on how to humanize online learning.

Excerpt:

EDTECH: How do your instructors strengthen student engagement in entirely online courses?

Scagnoli: We built that engagement by following the Community of Inquiry Framework. This model was created by online learning experts such as Dr. Randy Garrison and Dr. Norm Vaughan, who research distance education and blended learning. This model focuses on cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence to keep students engaged with online content.

You want to use every opportunity to promote critical thinking and trigger more class interactions and discussions. 

 

Scientists engineer air filter that can kill SARS-CoV-2 instantly  — from interestingengineering.com by Loukia Papadopoulos
Virus tests found that 99.8% of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was killed in a single pass.

This filter could be useful in airports and in airplanes, in office buildings, schools, and cruise ships to stop the spread of COVID-19…

 
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