Using the online class well: Making the most of the synchronous time with your class

When I started teaching online, I figured out pretty quickly that I couldn't simply squeeze four hours of teaching and learning into the hour I had with my class. The first few years of online teaching felt like being a beginning teacher again. I had to fundamentally rethink how I organised things as those 60 minutes were such a precious commodity.

For my class, I am interested in developing a Knowledge Building Community. Well. That's the goal. This means that discussion and collaboration are central and everything we do hangs off of these principles.

Often my students are the only Art Historians at their school, sometimes they are the only online learners. They work in isolation during the week, so it is ultra important that collaborative opportunities are maximised during our synchronous time together; whether we are collaborating in a slide, in a breakout room or discussion in Knowledge Forum. Everyone has a responsibility to add to our collective knowledge and they know that they have a part to play. Our work as a collective is highly visible to everyone in that learning community.

And when I talk to my students about what they value in their learning, it is that discussion and connection to the class that is important to them.

When I think about learning design that will help to support this, the SAMR model (Dr Ruben Puentedura) comes to mind. As the image above shows, the emphasis is on the affordances that technology allows. So how can you leverage the Zoom call or even the tools you use with the class to connect in ways that previously wouldn't have been possible?

SAMR

I've been reflecting a lot, since the staff meeting Madeline facilitated around the 'Create' part of learn-create-share and the SAMR model.

(http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/create-learn-create-share-pedagogy.html)  

(Reuben Puentedura)

Two things were highlighted for me.

• How much of what we do is a substitution, and how can we redesign learning tasks given the affordances we have with digital tools? This is something to work through with our awesome team of Junior homeroom teachers. It may be about identifying one or two things that would be achievable for our team. I'm also keen to get out and have a look at good practice in other schools that have been at this digital immersion thing for longer than we have.
• We can't operate at the top of the model all of the time. It would be exhausting and unsustainable (This was reinforced this week at the Mindlab when we were discussing change management. When introducing new ideas, leaders need to think about 'cyclical energising'. What this means is that there will be periods of intense focus and effort, then periods of easing back and just celebrating the wins.) We need to look at the Junior schemes and think about there we could design 'Create' moments and when it would be more appropriate to just augment the task, using the digital tools we have available.

I really value PD with Madeline, it always leaves me with an 'aha moment' or just some little gem to reflect on.