Long story short, my school had an E-Learning Day last week due to a fire in the art department.
For more details click on this link: https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2019/11/05/south-junior-high-fire-tuesday-afternoon-cancels-school-wednesday/4170500002/
I went into this day frustrated by having to do more work than I would if I had the chance to teach in class that day. I was overwhelmed with the idea of learning more new things because this year is full of too many learning experiences. But as the day began, I realized how much I enjoyed the freedom e-learning provided.
I uploaded an e-learning folder with the materials for each of my classes on Schoology.
Materials included:
- E-Learning Day Check In (used for attendance)
- PDF assignment
- Assignment dropbox
I had not used the feature for asking students a question before and found a lot of use for it by creating my check in questions. I plan to use more check in questions to start my reading class because I need a better routine for starting class.
For the check in, I asked my students to write a few sentences about how their day off was going and what their plans were. I provided them with two sentence frames.
My day is going ____________________________.
I am going to ______________________________.
On short notice, this was the perfect way for my students to engage in the class to be counted as present.
The PDFs were of two worksheets from my reading class’ review packet. We were going to do them in class, so I thought this would be a great way to gauge how many students understand how to complete and turn in assignments on Schoology.
Well, I got my answer. Half of my class completed the check in and only ONE student completed and turned in the worksheets. I am not sure if my directions were not clear, but I chose to keep them simple in the hopes of preventing confusion. I guess I was wrong, but am unsure.
By the end of the work day, I decided to develop a discussion for class the following day about E-Learning Days. Our students had not been exposed to this kind of learning yet and I felt they needed to express their thoughts/questions. The reflection lesson went over well and I was able to address many questions and issues that came up when they were working at home. I also provided them with a few minutes to complete the check in and finish their worksheets on paper.
Before future E-Learning Days, I plan to teach my students how to export the PDFs into Notability, go over how to use Notability, and how to submit assignments from Notability into the dropbox on Schoology. Overall, I am not feeling more confident in E-Learning Days and will develop clear and concise directions for the assignments.
I related to your statement, Molly, “I was overwhelmed with the idea of learning more new things because this year is full of too many learning experiences.” Your post prompted me to create an electronic document of all the apps and programs our classmates in this class have mentioned throughout the semester, instead of just the notes in my notebook I currently have. Because there are a lot of them, and this isn’t including the resources to which Dr. Kilborn has drawn our attention. Now the next step is to look into each of them and find how they could enhance my class. But that’s a project for another time.
Kudos for trying some new electronic resources, and especially for looking into why things didn’t seem to go as you expected. It would have been easier to write the experience off as a flop and return to business as usual. All teachers need to keep in mind what you did, that maybe we (the teachers) or the students may just not be used to the technology yet. That doesn’t mean it can’t add value to the classroom if we ensure that everyone knows how to properly use it.
P.S. You close saying “Overall, I am not feeling more confident in E-Learning Days…” I hope the “not” was a typo and that you are feeling more confident, because it sounds to me like you found solid ways to address E-Learning Days!
Thank you for your kind words and feedback!
Molly, my school also does e-learning days. Last year was our first year trying them out… It was quite the year to be testing it out. We had over 8 e-learning days from January to May. These were my takeaways from the days:
1) My younger students were actually “better” at the e-learning days. They were not used to doing nothing on snow days; therefore, they did the assigned work. When I say younger, I mean 9th grade. My upperclassmen truly struggled to get anything done on these days.
2) Videos are a must. I quickly learning that to make these days a replacement for the classroom, there should be some type of video to replace what I would be teaching or discussing in class. I used the videos to teach something and to give very clear instructions. These instructions were also posted on my Google Classroom. I wanted to give them no excuses for not accomplishing something.
Overall, I like e-learning, but they can be tough days to plan for. You will get more and more comfortable with them as they come and go!
Thank you for sharing your experience!