3 Big Things I Learned In This Educational Technology Course

 

Best Practices for Online Teaching - VoiceThread

 Here is my short presentation on strategies that teachers can use to keep students engaged in an online setting.

Skills Vs. Performance Deficits

    If you have a student or multiple students who aren't participating in class there are a couple things you can do to motivate them.  One thing you can do is offer some kind of reward for increased participation, this could potentially get unmotivated students to participate more in class.  Another strategy is to reach out to the student and ask if there's anything they're not understanding in the class, this can help you determine if the student is struggling due to a lack of skills or due to a lack of motivation.  One more thing you could do to increase student participation is encourage class discussion even if it's just to share ideas between students.

    If students are demonstrating a skills deficit, then you can give them extra work to help them practice their skills.  Have the student, or students, complete assignments similar to tasks they've already done and see if they're able to improve on their own.  If the students can't improve on their own they'll need extra help.  You could also give the students further explanations about the tasks they're doing so that they might understand why they're doing these assignments.

    If students are demonstrating a performance deficit, then you need to entice them to do the work.  Offering a reward for completing assignments can be a helpful way to increase students' motivation.  Another way you could increase a student's motivation is by giving the student a specialized role in the class such as, discussion leader.  Another way you could motivate students is by offering some kind of shortened assessment or allowing the students to skip an assessment and get an automatic A. 

Strategies to Facilitate Student Engagement in an Online Setting

 There are many strategies for teachers to use for facilitating student engagement in an online setting, in this blog post I'll tell you about five of them.  One strategy teachers can use is to set expectations and model engagement.  Another strategy teachers can use is to build engagement and motivation with course content and activities.  Teachers are encouraged to initiate interaction and create a faculty presence.  Also a good way for teachers to facilitate student engagement is by fostering interaction between students and creating a learning community.  A final strategy for teachers is to create an inclusive environment.

   Implementing these strategies in your online classroom is easy.  For setting expectations and modeling engagement, reach out to students prior to the start of the course, clearly identify assignment due dates, make the course available online early, and post expectations and course policies.  For building engagement and motivation with course content and activities, provide students with a variety of content, create a short intro for each unit, provide clear guidance for completing course activities and gaining deeper understanding of course content, send out homework due date reminders for each assignment, and encourage students to ask questions.  For initiating interaction and creating a faculty presence, post info about yourself, develop a communication plan, and provide frequent and interactive feedback on student work.  For fostering interaction between students, encourage critical and reflective discussion, use team projects, and set up help teams.  For creating an inclusive environment, get to know your students, highlight students' individual experiences, check your assumptions, and be conscious of accessibility concerns.

Online Learning Evaluation

 

Using Nearpod In The Classroom

 Nearpod is a virtual learning tool that can be used to help design interactive lessons such as quizzes, polls, videos, collaborate boards, and more.  Nearpod has many benefits, including 22,000+  pre-made standards-aligned lessons, videos, and activities for all K-12 subjects, featuring trusted publishers.  You can also create your own slide-based lessons or videos with embedded interactive activities and assessments.  Students can follow along on their own devices while the teacher has access to their responses in real time.  Nearpod can also help increase student engagement and participation, students can feel comfortable responding to questions by answering digitally while the teacher encourages class discussion.

However, Nearpod also has some limitations.  Nearpod is technology dependent and students don't always have access to their own laptops/tablets, and technology has a tendency to fail sometimes.  Another drawback of Nearpod is the paid features, not everything in the program is made available for free, if you want access to more features you need to pay a yearly subscription which ranges from $120-$349.  Some of the better features such as student-paced lessons, individual student reports, and access to thousands of ready to teach Nearpod lessons can only be used once you pay hundreds of dollars.  Nearpod's slideshow functionality has also been described as subpar and it's recommended that you upload Google slides or PowerPoint slides into Nearpod instead of using their template.

There are many ways for teachers to implement Nearpod into their lesson plans whether in the classroom or virtually.  First you can use Nearpod as a simple presentation delivery method like PowerPoint.  Nearpod can also be used to distribute student resources like images or worksheets to the whole class.  Teachers can use the app to do live formative assessments and see students' responses and check for their understanding in real time.  Teachers can also use Nearpod to have students participate in interactive games and activities to add interest and excitement to everyday learning.  Students can also use Nearpod to assess themselves using the "poll" feature.

VR as an education tool

 The VR educational tool I looked into was the VR Lessons by ThingLink app.  This app allows you to visit multiple destinations around the world.  The app will show you a 360° view of whichever place you pick to visit.  Each destination also has links embedded in the images that will take you to different websites with information and facts about each place.  The app also has audio available for people who struggle to read well.

This tool is tailored more for primary school children because it's easy to use and doesn't include any super difficult concepts.  The idea for this tool is to allow people, like young children, to visit places around the world that they normally wouldn't be able to visit.  Teachers would also use this app to help teach their young students about the different ecosystems around the world.  It probably wouldn't be used by secondary school students because the information would most likely already be known.

This tool can benefit individuals by teaching them about environments they're not likely to experience at home.  It can also benefit teachers by helping them save time from having to design their own lessons from scratch when going over these subjects in class.  This VR tool can also help students get familiar with using a VR lesson so that they're more prepared for if they participate in more VR lessons in the future.  Lastly, this app can help parents save money from having to go on expensive trips their kids might want to take, instead just take a VR tour.