We are now several weeks into this lockdown. The daily meets are happening, the normal attendees are attending and then there are some who we are trying to engage with to attend the meets.
One of my non attendees is a lovely student in my class. On the first week of lockdown, this student attended some of the meets then she stopped. I was getting very worried and phone calls were made, emails sent and the reply was "Yes Miss, I will come on". That didn't really happen. However, although this student is not attending the daily meets, she is actually doing the required work. She is sending through work that we are currently working on. Blogging her tasks and its almost as if she is getting information from the meets without being there.
I reflected on this and realised. This student is able to do all the required work because of the way the Home Learning page is set up with the required work and I am also sending email reminders to students of the work they are required to work on every day. I also add screencast recordings at the end of the day to wrap up the day and just reflect and acknowledge the students for their dedication and effort in our meets and work.
I suppose the objective of this post is to remind ourselves as teachers about the importance of having a class site which is easy to navigate and while we like to play website designer and make our sites flash, we also have to keep in mind that the site should be easily navigated by the students and their parents. There is already a lot of anxiety attached to being on lockdown and adding more anxiety by having to navigate a complicated class site is not helpful for our learners and their whanau.
Site tips:
On the landing page of your class site, have a very visible HOME LEARNING button which links to your Home Learning page
Keep the site simple and easy to navigate
Have visuals to guide the students (too much text is uninviting)
Be present on the Home Learning page. What I mean by this is, have photos of yourself or recordings of you talking. I believe it helps with connecting with our tamariki while we are not seeing them face to face
Update the Home Learning Page daily. Some people might think, this is too repetitive and I am having to copy the same thing. For me, updating daily with announcements, meet times, recordings of myself keeps the Home Learning page active. The students will visit the Home Learning page and be updated if there is a change of meet times, or there is an assembly...
This is so very helpful, thank you. Being a bit newer to some things, what is your opinion / advice about students hanging out in meets, playing games together, talking hanging out, I heard swearing and other concerns were that whānau could be heard?
ReplyDeleteKia ora Susanne, thank you for your comment. Are the students having their own meets on their own without a teacher present? Is this using the class meet link or a meet they created themselves? I strongly advise my students not to have these meets on their own because it can lead to some non cybersmart behaviour. I would address this by having a conversation with the class and going over how important it is to be cybersmart and keeping ourselves and our peers safe while we are online. Regarding whanau being heard, I advise my students to find a quiet place in the house to sit in when we are having meets. However, I do understand that it might be difficult for some of our tamariki who are in bubbles with a lot of whanau in the house. My advise would be to have the microphone on mute and if the students wants to share they could unmute if they are comfortable to share with the microphone on or if there are whanau around they could type their comment in the chat. Hope that helps. Kia kaha!
DeleteSuch great advice and insight - thank you so much, I appreciate it very much. The Meets were set up by us but some students kept going back into them and I was concerned by how they were being used sometimes. We will do some cybersmart / Meet work but I just wondered what you thought as your blog was so insightful, ngā mihi.
ReplyDeleteHi Susanne, if you remove the students one by one from the meet at the end of your class session they should not be able to return back to the meet unless they join and you admit them back. If they just leave without being removed then they will. be able to come back to the meet without being admitted by the host. Hope that helps.
DeleteThanks that helps, so good to know - do you think students should be in the Meet without staff, I have some who don't agree?
ReplyDeleteWell it really depends on the purpose. What is the purpose in the students having online meets on their own? Also comes down to how well we know our class. Can we leave them unaccompanied online using a platform provided by the school? Personally for me I prefer to not have the tamariki on a meet without a staff being present using a school meet link.
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