On a couple of occasions this school year, in my classes, there have been issues with wifi that didn't allow the kids to hear the me when on a video call. When it happened to me, I was able to see and hear all the kids, but they kept telling me they were not able to hear me. My microphone and other settings were on point, but for some strange reason, kids could not hear me.
When this happened last, it was a US History lesson where I was going to teach about Thomas Paine. Once I realized the kids could not hear me, I pivoted by communicating whole class via Zoom chat. From there, I immediately put a message in the chat telling students to go into Google Classroom and clicking on the lesson video YouTube link.
What I did prior to the lesson was record myself teaching the lesson, with Screencastify, and upload it to YouTube. The purpose, originally, was to have the lesson video on-demand for absent students or for those who wanted to revisit the lesson later. With kids not able to hear me due to wifi issues, I directed kids to watch the lesson on YouTube. This was the same lesson I would have taught synchronously on Zoom.
The lesson was roughly 20 minutes in length. With 40 minutes remaining in the period, I instructed kids in the chat to watch the YouTube lesson and return with 10 minutes left in class. When they returned, they had a couple exit tickets, one to show their notes on the camera and the other was to answer a reflection question in the chat.
Had I not pre-recorded the lesson with Screencastify and uploaded to YouTube, that lesson might have been lost. Using the video lesson in that manner was not the original intent, but it did save the day in the end. Pre-recording lessons may be a little bit of extra work, but it is definitely worth in the long run.
This is just one of the surreal events I have encountered in distance learning. I'd love to hear from you. What are some of your surreal experiences in distance learning?
If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Hangouts at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. If you would like to unsubscribe from this blog, go to bit.ly/tcjinbox.
My book, The Complete EdTech Coach: An Organic Approach to Digital Learning, co-authored with my wife Katherine Goyette is due out in October/November of 2020. It will be published by Dave Burgess Publishing. Keep an eye out on this blog and on social media. Be sure to follow the hashtag #OrganicEdTech and #CVTechTalk for updates.
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