Unboxing Education

  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...

  TL;DR: Canva is a free tool for educators and students. It provides templates and other tools to make the classroom more exciting. Canva offers video courses for teachers and students. Are you using all of the FREE tools with  Canva ? I have to assume many teachers out there are using Canva regularly at this point. The Canva design suite for teachers just keeps getting better and better! Read more:

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...

 Regardless of the educational setting, many parents and teachers enjoy the convenience of offering virtual conference options. Time savings and flexible schedules can serve to increase parental involvement in conferences as well. Hosting a successful virtual meeting, though, can benefit from some careful planning. 1. Advertise : Get the word out to parents and students about the options for virtual conferences. Send multiple emails in the weeks leading up. Be sure the options are communicated in district conference communication as well. List the method, time frame, and topics that you may cover. I send something like this:  Consider signing up for a short conference this week.  Signing up is easy. Simply click HERE and choose a time slot that works best for you.  Don't see a time slot? Reply here to let me know when you are available. We can meet by video or phone.  Some things we can discuss:  Simply meeting and greeting Concerns over content Making a pl...

  Supporting students in a virtual environment goes by many names. Coaching mentoring or shepherding are all programs that have been instituted to provide the virtual student with that one key person within the virtual program that can offer them support and guidance. I often liken the mentor, as it is called in my program, to a guidance counselor as it is a person that can see a student's whole schedule and has regular contact with the student and the parents to communicate important information about the virtual program and to answer any questions that the student has. The mentor also communicates with the teachers when a student has an issue such as an extended illness that might impact their ability to work in their classes. Without a mentor, a student can get lost or overlooked in a program. Teachers may know a student is struggling in their class but may not realize that they're not working in any classes or may miss key information about that student's personal life....

  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...

  Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of any work-from-home job is how to not be working. It becomes too easy to have one foot in the office at all times. I learned the lesson of unplugging in the most unlikely of circumstances, teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the fall of 2020, I saw my virtual student enrollment soar from a pre-pandemic level of 90 students to 300+ enrollments. I was also trying to support my coworkers and just generally navigate living, and parenting, during unprecedented times.  Prior to the pandemic, I prided myself on my quick response times and my inbox-zero mentality. I worked on and off most of the day and usually late into the night. While busy seasons sometimes got my schedule off kilter, the catch as catch can method worked most of the time.  However, by the end of September 2020, it became clear that inbox zero would be a distant memory. I also rarely got all submitted assignments graded. I remember days when I would s...