Unboxing Education

A smooth start to the school year sets the tone for everything that follows,  especially in the online classroom . Whether you're new to virtual teaching or a seasoned pro, building trust , clarity , and connection early on pays off all year long. Here are three essential steps to help you start strong: ✉️ 1. Send a Welcome Letter That Connects Before students ever click into your LMS, send a warm, clear, and visually friendly welcome letter. Include: 👋 A brief personal introduction (with a photo, if you're comfortable) 📚 A simple overview of what to expect in your class 📬 Preferred communication channels & your response times 🔑 Login instructions and how to get started 🎥 Bonus: Add a short video greeting to help students feel connected, especially in asynchronous or self-paced programs. 📊 Fun fact: A 2014 study found that instructor-generated video content boosted student engagement and satisfaction in online higher ed courses. 🔥 Pro Tip: Use a m...

🎯 Why Instructional Coaching Matters Even More in Virtual Asynchronous Schools 💡 Isolation is Real—But Coaching Can Break It All teaching can feel isolating. Even with teachers just down the hall, some may feel left out or unsure. In virtual asynchronous schools, teachers often work alone behind a screen, compounding the isolation.  🟡 No hallway conversations 🟡 No informal classroom visits 🟡 No quick team huddles after school 🎯 Instructional coaching is the bridge between isolation and innovation. While good coaching is the same in any school environment, in a virtual, asynchronous school, intentionality is key to meaningful conversations.  “Coaching in Brick-and-Mortar vs. Virtual Schools” Coaching Role Brick & Mortar School 🏫 Virtual Asynchronous School 💻 Peer Collaboration Daily, informal Rare, must be intentional Feedback Opportunities Frequent and real-time Needs to be scheduled and structured Access to Classroom Practice Ea...

 Have you ever struggled to explain to people what it is you do all day?  At the intersection of virtual teaching and instructional coaching, I feel this. Many of the excellent resources for instructional coaching are geared toward in-person classrooms.  What does a virtual instructional coach do? The same thing they encourage their teachers to do: Borrow, Adapt, Innovate. Here is a graphic I made to explain my role to my teachers.  Click here to view in Canva This graphic adapts the 5 coaching approaches in Jill Jackson's book,  How to Coach Teachers to Teach (almost) Anything.

 Freebie Alert: At the link below, find a tab with the ChatGPT prompt and a tab with the Blooket csv format. Template in Google Sheets Customize the provided prompt in ChatGPT to generate a table of questions. Copy the questions starting in 3B of the CSV template. Save CSV tab as a CSV >File>Download>Comma Separated Value Create Blooket Game Import Questions with Spreadsheet Import option Edit/Review Game and Save Have fun!

  AI does not take the summer off! While many in education were relaxing at the beach or vegging out to Netflix in their PJs (or was that just me?), AI was plugging away, making developments that made so many of the policies and practices from Spring obsolete.  Once I finished my Netflix binge, I tackled the mountain of AI updates, tools, and trends that I had been bookmarking since June. Here is a round-up of what's new and worth reporting: Nolej Nolej recently released update 1.0. While I fear there may be a requirement to move to a paid plan soon, there is still a free version and it got some new bells and whistles. Most notably, I can now upload a graded quiz to my LMS using SCORM packages: Nolej still offers teachers the ability to create microlearning packages while limiting the AI to only the knowledge provided by the instructor, thus offering some guardrails that don't exist in AI at large Conker Conker has been my go-to for quick, AI quizzes, especially for reteaching...

 Incorporating student choice into assignments can increase engagement and show mastery of 21st-century skills.  A popular method for choice is a choice board. Choice boards give students parameters for demonstrating mastery of concepts but allow them choice in the final format of the assignment.  Check out a great Literacy Choice Board Here: This assignment demonstrates mastery in the following CCSS ELA Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.10 By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11—CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 11—CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently. This link will take you to a Canva project that includes the slide above, a rubric, and step-by-step instructions for each project listed. Tools use...

 FERPA Defined FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law in the United States that regulates the access to and protection of student educational records. It gives students and their parents the right to access, review, and control their educational records, and sets limits on the release of personally identifiable information from these records to third parties. In an Online Environment FERPA can be tricky in an online environment when teachers are communicating, screen sharing, or hosting group lessons. In a synchronous environment, teachers may have little control or even awareness as to who can hear their conversation. Here are a few tips to protect yourself and your students in regards to FERPA and student privacy: Communication Limit the amount of personally identifiable information (PII) shared in the email. This may include a student's name, address, Social Security number, grades, or other sensitive information. Be sure to only contact a...

 Mentally, I was drafting an update on how I'm handling AI in my virtual Britlish Lit class when I received this email: Click for GrammarlyGo Well, great.  That blurred the lines, didn't it?  Created with openart.ai Over the last few weeks, I've met with over a dozen students to discuss their use of ChatGPT. Surprisingly, they've all been honest about their use of AI to "help" them write assignments in Brit Lit.  Here is my process: 1. I sent all of my students a friendly "Don't be dumb with AI" message:                Dear {{First name}} So far this year, many new tools have become available using  artificial   intelligence  (AI) to assist in various tasks.  Depending on your age and with your learning coach's permission, you can no doubt find many helpful things out there. For instance,  Quickdraw  is a fun AI game, and Chefgpt.xyz generates recipes from ingredients you have on han...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the education landscape in many ways.  One of the most promising applications of AI in education is its ability to personalize learning through differentiation. Differentiation refers to the practice of tailoring instruction and assessment to meet the unique needs and abilities of each student. Traditionally, differentiation has been a labor-intensive process, requiring teachers to create and manage multiple lesson plans, assessments, and activities for each student. (Thanks, ChatGPT ) However, with the advent of AI, differentiation is becoming more efficient and effective. This video gives one example of differentiation in an asynchronous literature course for twelfth graders.  Start to finish, this lesson example took 30 minutes.  How are you using AI to differentiate instruction and encourage mastery learning?

  The edu-sphere is abuzz with the potential of ChatGPT , both for good and for evil. How should teachers and schools react?  If in the madness of teaching during the holiday season, you missed the coverage of the new chatbot that writes a variety of genres, including essays, lesson plans, and even computer code, you can read more here  and here .  I concur with Matt Miller and others that blocking access to one chatbot is an exercise in futility. For one, filters likely only work on campus networks. Moreover, more chatbot tools will likely emerge as the technology grows in popularity. It would be a waste of manpower to try to keep up with all of them.  What can teachers do, then, but embrace the potential? Embrace, also, the responsibility to incorporate education and model best practices. For instance, MLA and other style guides provide guidelines for citing the outputs of chatbots and other AI tools. Did you use ChatGPT to generate that stellar parent-teache...

Proper creation of an online course involves hours of planning, design, and beta testing. Who has the time?  Finding a stock course to use in your online school is a godsend. While many quality courses are available at a variety of price points, virtually none will work in every course, every time.  Furthermore, research shows that the ability to both use stock courses AND modify them are key elements of quality online teaching. When studying teacher-student engagement, Borup and Graham cited minor "tweaks" to the purchased curriculum as being significantly important to maximizing teacher satisfaction. Some of the most common tweaks were reorganizing units, adding school policies, or customizing an assignment for a specific student. Teachers without the ability to modify their courses felt disconnected from the learning process.  As important as customization is, it often overwhelms already busy teachers. Furthermore, when courses are likely to be updated or refreshed ev...

  As the number of K-12 students taking online classes increases, the need for research to identify best practices specific to the online classroom becomes greater. Michigan and Florida, along with other states, require most students to take an online course in order to graduate. Moreover, students are electing to enroll in virtual schools for all of their classes, whether those schools be in their district or in a charter school, public or private. The chances are that a teacher entering the field today will, at some point, have the opportunity or obligation to teach in an online setting. The value of a great teacher is established and makes the need for best practices more urgent.  For teachers already teaching online, it quickly becomes apparent that while a few classroom strategies transfer to the virtual classroom, many do not. The available literature on the topic of teaching online centers around either higher education settings or blended learning models. Some new rese...

  As much as I enjoy reading inspiring books about great pedagogy, most likely they describe a learning environment much different from my own. All the blogs about building relationships, all the Pinterest boards with cute decor ideas, and all the podcasts about great, tech-filled lesson plans are geared toward the face-to-face environment. Rather than let this get me down, I try to ask myself the following questions: Is there an aspect of this technique I could use in my virtual classroom? If not, is there another way to create the same result using the tools I have at my disposal?       In the case of step one, I have created asynchronous Kahoot games that I emailed to my online students. I leave the quiz open for one week and then email “winners.” See my previous post on building rapport through rewards.       Step two can be a bit less straightforward. In order to give my students a choice within an online classroom that is largely prewr...