Suddenly Teaching and learning remotely - What do you do?

Dear teachers and students,

We ask you to share your experiences, challenges and solutions while schools are closed to “flatten the curve”.

  • How well do you feel prepared for this sudden step forward in digital teaching and learning?
  • Do you have good resources you would recommend?
  • Or are you searching for solutions?

Our community will surely be happy to help out with ideas and suggestions.

  • Did you have some especially good or bad experiences?

  • How does your “new normal” day look like now?

  • What technological or social adjustments do you think would be necessary?

Here are a few old articles discussing digital learning. They are in German as I am more familiar with the german school system and most of the teachers I know are from there. But please everyone share relevant articles here and to share this request for “suddenly learning digitally” with teachers and students you know anywhere in any language.

Uhm some of the things that are a bit surprising is that it seems there is such a big gap in attitudes and cultures around remote learning…

Someone in my feeds mentioned getting an email from their professor reminding students that they are to wear clothes during zoom lessons/meetings :exploding_head:

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Going digital in Croatia means national TV - the classes for the primary school are actually being organized on one of the TV channels following the general curriculum and even including arts and physical education! :slight_smile:

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:rofl: My students don’t turn on video unless they absolutely have to (i.e. I tell them that without video, their presentation will probably get a worse grade.).

Other than that, I think as teachers it’s important to remember that we are not only teaching remotely, but teaching during an acute crisis. My students have mostly returned to their home countries/towns, their project teams are now scattered, and some are affected directly or indirectly by health issues or deaths in the family.

I think in times of crisis, teachers need to surface all of their empathy and leadership qualities, remember that it’s more about learning that the institutional framework (e.g. I couldn’t care less about sign-in sheets, and I’m spending a bit of time reminding students that we will find solutions to any situation they are in).

Oh and @MariaEuler, I’ll definitely have to be more creative with my backgrounds it seems! :slight_smile:

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ok but still you know there is much to be said for dressing up (both as teacher and as student). during WW1 i think i heard that they insisted soldiers brush their teeth even in the trenches, yes hygiene but also the psychological effect is real. I used to dress up and wear lipstick while slogging through the snoozier classes at Uni- it actually helped alot.

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I am currently developing a workshop for some design students at Beckmans university to be done from home in digitally connected groups of 4 students. Originally the workshop “poetiska maskiner” was ment for them to come together and build a big fischli&weis style chainreaction machine and explore physical storytelling. However, now we transform it into a digital distributed workshop, but one that intentionally encourages the use of physical items in the different homes to represent and make connections with each other socially in times of physical distance. The workshop online workshop will take place in the week after easter and I will try to make it a case study for using the physical environment when connecting online. Maybe it can be expanded into an online teambuilding activity :slight_smile:

Meanwhile A friend of mine teaching 17+ year olds preparing for fachabitur is struggling with also having to teach some basic conventions like adding subject lines and at least a hello as text to their emails when sending over their exercises.