Boring post title I know. But I am not really concerned about attracting eyes in these crazy time. Over the weekend I found out that my international students (two from China and one from South Korea) are heading home. I sure can’t blame them for wanting to be home or their parents for wanting them home. I will miss them though.
In theory the students going to their home countries will be working from there. There is a 12 hour time difference and they will probably be facing a 14 day quarantine with no guarantee that they will have internet during that time. So who knows what they will be able to do. They are all in my APCS Principles course so should have access to everything they need.
A lot of my student turn off their cameras during class. Maybe bad hair day, maybe they are wandering away, who knows what else. I can’t see any good way to require that the camera stay on. At least one student doesn't have a camera on his desktop computer. Zoom shows me that.I keep mine on all the time though. I think it is important that students see my face and know that I am there and engaged. I’ve had some private chats with my international students who have not yet left.
For my Programming Honors course, I have recorded a number of my presentations and most materials are already online. I am regretting that I didn’t put more effort into learning GitHub though. Just one more example of how teaching from home is changing how I think about sharing resources with students and others.
BTW, Mike Zamansky had a guest post by JonAlf Dyrland-Weaver at Guest Post - Missing out on a great opportunity in education It’s about how important is it for educators to share resources and information about what they are learning at this time. Think about starting a blog of your own. Or even offering a guest post for this one. But really think about sharing what you are doing.
2 comments:
I have been teaching totally online for several years at our community college. (I am full-time and tenured.)
I taught my first online class in January 2000. One hard lesson I learned that first semester was the need for what I call a Help Forum. This is where students should post any question they would ask in class. Perhaps you want to call it Raise Your Hand. The first semester I messed up some of the posts as you can imagine (I still do sometimes!). I had an email from EVERY student asking the same question about the incorrect / unclear posts. No "raise your hand in class" ability for them.
So - if you can, have a "raise your hand" forum.
Good luck and stay safe!
Pat Rahmlow
We do not start remote teaching until this Wednesday. I still have students that have not logged into Google Classroom.
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