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Teaching at a Distance Center Overview

OER Project Blog
Teaching at a Distance Center Overview

This blog provides an explanation of what you'll find in our TaaD Center. Don't forget to log in with your OER Project account to access the TaaD Center itself!

As many of us transition into the wild west of teaching in 2020, we’re confronted with what feels like a million different models of teaching: teaching in school; teaching from home; teaching from school while some students are there and some are at home; teaching from school while everyone is at home—well, we’re all getting a bit dizzy. And while we know there’s no magic formula that’s going to make teaching and learning seamless under these circumstances, we at the OER Project have decided to put together a Teaching at a Distance (TaaD) Center. Our goal? Provide some support and guidance to help you navigate the school year. 

The TaaD Center is divided into four sections: Overall Guides; Course Plans; Content Skills and Activities; and When All Else Fails. We will also put up a TaaD-related blog post each month and host conversations in the community about different TaaD topics. There are already a ton of conversations going on about TaaD, so go to the community and search for terms like “teaching at a distance,” “distance learning,” “teaching online,” and so on. Also, don’t forget to tag related posts with #TaaD. This will help others in their search for TaaD topics.

As you kick off the school year, let us know what else we can do to support you, and please share your tips and tricks and classroom wins with the community—we need each other more than ever. Stay safe and well!!

Overall Guides

We worked with Trinity College in Dublin to help us construct three frameworks related to teaching at a distance. Check out the linked guides for more detail.


Teaching at a Distance Framework – I Do, You Do, We Do

Our philosophies around teaching and learning haven’t changed because we’re not in the classroom. However, due to the shift in learning environments, our practices have to change. This can feel daunting. One trick for making this change is to use the I Do, You Do, We Do framework. The framework is simple—"I do” are the things you will have to teach or introduce. “We do” are the things you might do alongside students, or that they do alongside one another. “You do” are things students work on independently.

Assessment at a Distance

Assessment should be happening everywhere and all the time. Early in the school year, we recommend you focus on quick, formative assessments to help you “read the room.” Once you’ve established some initial routines and classroom practices, you can start digging into student learning a bit more, using rubrics, progression tools, and other course resources to assess student progress. Summative assessment may not look a whole lot different at a distance. Check out the guide for more detailed information on how to assess at a distance…and how to make your students more responsible for assessing their own learning.

Classroom Culture at a Distance

It’s more important than ever to foster a positive classroom culture. We are all facing new challenges and a huge amount of uncertainty in our lives. Before we can even get to teaching and learning, we must check in on our students’ well-being and make sure we’ve established a safe, comfortable a reading and watching videos, and new historical information. After you’ve completed introductory content, you can move into application and student choice. This will help you assess student understanding and will also give students options for some self-directed learning.

Content, Skills, and Activities

In this section of the Center, we will be sharing suggestions from teachers on converting specific OER Project activities for TaaD. We will also provide suggestions for how to teach skills progressions and other activities at a distance. Finally, look for short videos that will provide tips for both general TaaD strategies, as well as for specific OER Project assets.

When All Else Fails

When schools first started shutting down in the early spring of 2020, we put together two sets of resources to help teachers. First, Ian Usher, a distance teaching guru, wrote a series of blog posts with guiding principles for TaaD. We highly recommend checking this out if you are new to TaaD, or if you’re looking for resources to share with parents (here's a link to Ian's Week 1 Blog!). Second, BHP teacher Rachel Hansen and WHP Origins teacher Wood Boyles took us on a nine-week journey through each of the courses on Khan Academy. They posted a short daily video that consisted of a driving question, introduction to new content, a short assignment, and a prompt asking students to write a “historian’s journal” entry. These videos are an awesome resource that can be used in combination with your own teaching, and are another great place to point caretakers who suddenly find themselves homeschooling.

To access all these free materials and resources, head over to the TaaD Center. Not registered yet for the OER Project? Click here and sign up. It's fast, easy, and free!

Anonymous

  • We are 3 weeks into virtual learning, and we have had our ups and downs.  My students are 6th graders and have had varying experiences in terms of exposure to technology and to social science instruction.  While this marks the start of my 20th year teaching, and their 7th year learning, we are navigating Big History, Google Classroom, and Zoom together as 1st year teacher and learners together.  There is a constant eagerness into our daily adventurers into the curriculum, with students wanting to know what we are going to be "doing" today in class, and will there be any "homework" (I have yet to point out the fact that in virtual learning, all work is homework).  While I have noticed that there is a definite "social starvation" in my students and a huge need to interact with others, they are also wanting the daily structure and discipline of the traditional school day, in which they log in to their Zoom classrooms with an anticipation for getting back to the "business as usual" work that was school as we knew it 7 months ago.

    The challenges of virtual learning have not been what they were this past spring with students going AWOL, little real time engagement, and a sense of helplessness as administration and bureaucracy gave us mixed messages about what we could and could not do.  Instead, we have had a 90% to 95% attendance rate so far, and an almost "open the floodgates" approach to engaging students at start the year. Our students began the year with a heavy approach to learning the ins and outs of Google Classroom and Zoom as our main learning platforms.  Even with a few hiccups in terms of logging in and internet issues, our students have been able to successfully navigate their way to being proficient in the technological aspects of virtual learning.  As we began to wade into the content, I noticed an eagerness from many of our students when it came to wanting to know the answers to questions right away.  I chalked this up to their elementary social studies classes, where there was not as much inquiry, and more presenting of information for them to memorized.  Of course starting the year off with History as Mystery: The Case of the Headless Romans, went totally against everything they were used to having in terms of social studies instruction.  Yet, just like in years past, our students really ate up this experience, and they found the idea of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the past almost mindblowing, with many of them saying, "we're not just learning history in social studies?".  We have continued this journey with more History as Mystery as we examined the story of Easter Island, weighing theories of both the downfall of this culture, as well as how they moved the Moai.  This will be our continuing theme throughout the year, History as Mystery, having students delving into inquiry based questions and asking them to sift through information and theories that explain how we have arrived at where we are at today, as well as what the future may hold.  

    While we are definitely moving much slower than we have in the past, the overall enthusiasm for learning and being engaged in class is definitely coming through loud and clear from our students.  Nothing about this year is going to be normal, and that I have come to accept.  Instruction will have to change, projects will have to be adjusted, and our collective learning in terms of pedagogy will be continually tested, but as I see those smiling faces pop onto my screen each morning and the hands waving goodbye at the end of each period, I have hope that we will make it through this year with a sense of accomplishment.  Every generation has had that year they never forget where they were.  Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor and America entering WW2?  Where were you at when you heard that President Kennedy was assassinated?  Where were you when you heard about the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding?  Where were you when you heard about the Twin Towers?  This will be the year we as teachers and students will all remember.  Where were you during COVID-19?  Learning at home with everyone else.

  • I have worked as a secondary teacher for 25 years.  I find much of "instruction" and "exploration" to be intuitive, but our parameter of remote learning challenges greatly my sense of comfortable intuition.  Teacher-Student duties and responsibilities, Assessments, and Classroom Culture are each challenged and require intention for successful practice.  My students, by and large, are all new to me this year; they are high school freshmen.  Not only do they begin their high school program of study, but they are asked to "think" (for the first time) in Big History.  Usually my 3-day each week, 85-minute block sessions provide sufficient time to get to know students, jump into material together, assess their growth and learning, and celebrate accomplishments; this year I have a one-hour live session, a three-hour optional "office hour" for students to check in and discuss material, and "hovering" on email daily each week.  Not optimal, not "best practices."  As most of you do, I maintain the Google Classroom as a platform to list welcomes, assignments, reflections, Calendar for Google Meet, and other items.  As a group, my students struggle to master Google Classroom and the Big History website platforms.  The remote dynamic empowers students to "choose" not to complete BH surveys, consider articles and videos, and likely write Investigations.  During my first three weeks, I have played the role of a parrot, repeating often the steps of routine, which compromises the great wonder of our curriculum.  Yet I remain resolute that our material is the best thing going in secondary teaching.  I would also argue that virtual learning and remote teaching are not in a position to replace our "old normal"; they are useful supplements but less than fully effective for young learners.  My thoughts for today!  Have a great day!