The ERRR podcast can also be listened to on Spotify, apple podcasts, and all other podcasting apps. 

Today we’re releasing a mammoth episode, in fact, it’s essentially 7 episodes in one as it comprises 7 interviews that I conducted between 9am and 9pm yesterday (March 28th, 2020) to try to get sense of what’s going on right now, right around the world as teachers and school leaders try to make the shift to online teaching. I tried to get a good sample both geographically and in terms of experience with online education, and was incredibly grateful for the eight educators who gave up time on their Saturday to help bring this episode to you.

In this introduction podcast I’ll give you a quick overview of what’s contained in each of these discussions, let’s call them the seven ‘chapters’ of this episode. As such, this overview can help you to decide which of the ‘chapters’ of this episode you’d like to dip in and out of, and which you’ll most likely get value from given where you and your school are at in the online teaching journey. That being said, I would highly recommend binge listening to all seven chapters, because a lot of the value that I garnered from these discussions came from the ability to compare and contrast what’s working, and what isn’t in various classrooms across the the world, as well as hearing how different educators and different schools have solved the same or similar problems.

If you appreciate the ERRR podcast and you'd like to support its continuing production, please sign on as a patron at www.patreon.com/errr and support the show for as little as $1 per month, or the average donation of $5 per month. 

The first interview of the day was with Courtney Ostaff. Courtney, currently based in West Virginia in the US, has been teaching online for two decades, most recently for the Well-Trained Mind Academy. Courtney spoke primarily about mathematics teaching, but also had some fantastic advice about catering to students with diverse needs. Some other key things that I took away from my discussion with Courtney was a great approach she has to supporting students to collaborate online, including a well refined process to scaffold students to do this effectively. If you’re a maths teacher, interested in scaffolding collaboration, or catering to the needs of a diverse range of students, this is a great chapter to listen to.

Chapter 2 is with Kerrie Russell, Principal of the Alice Springs School of the Air in Central Australia. Kerrie has been working in distance education for many years, and has a whole wealth of experience regarding what it takes to deliver successful learning online, with particular experience working in the primary years. One of the most powerful takeaways from this chapter was the conscious way that teachers from School of the Air build relationships with students, and the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to do so.

In Chapter 3, I spoke with Seven Kolber, an educator based here in Melbourne, Australia, who is an expert in creating instructional videos and flipped learning experiences for students. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Steven about why a teacher might choose to use videos over live lessons online, and some effective ways to make asynchronous learning available to students.

Chapter 4 was an incredible discussion with Sally Richmond and Yooah Nguyen from Beijing City International School, focusing on Elementary schooling via distance. As the Principal and Deputy Principal of BCIS, Sally and Yooah were able to give a fantastic overview of what it takes to move a whole school to online learning, and how this has played out over the last eight weeks that they’ve been in lockdown in Beijing. Sally talks of the process of planning and developing a whole school approach to online learning within a very short period of time, and they both talk of some of the challenges and pitfalls faced. This is an incredibly valuable chapter for anyone to listen to, as it’s packed with wisdom and advice about making the shift to online learning within a short time frame. I was immensely impressed by the clever structures that Beijing City International School has put together in order to support their young students to feel connected, engaged, and even to stay fit! Sally and Yooah have also put together a guide to online learning, which you can find in the show notes to chapter four.

Chapters 5 and 6 are my discussions with two teachers who have been living the online teaching experience for three weeks now, in two very different countries. Bianca Li Rosi shares her experiences teaching English as an Additional Language in South Korea, and Ellen Heyting shares what it’s been like teaching Psychology and the Humanities in Finland during the coronavirus shutdown. If you want some on the ground reflections from teachers in the thick of it, these two chapters are well worth a listen. Both Bianca and Ellen offer invaluable and practical advice about how to make it through your first few weeks of online teaching, from the practical, like make a standing desk for your own health, even if you need to make it out of cardboard boxes, to a whole range of online tech that you’re bound to find helpful. Both also helped to compile a list of useful links and resources for you to check out, so ensure you have a dig into those well curated lists also.

The final interview of the day was with teacher librarian and EdTech coordinator Nadine Bailey. Nadine works at the Western Academy Beijing who, like Sally and Yooah’s Beijing City International School, is currently entering their ninth week of online teaching. Nadine offered a fresh perspective, that of the teacher librarian and EdTech expert, and was able to provide additional details and guidance regarding effective use of Microsoft Office, as well as closing off this seven part episode with a really helpful way to conceive of EdTech more generally, from a needs-based perspective.

Feel free to dip in and out of these chapters as you see fit. But I do strongly recommend that you take the time to listen to each and every one of them. Perhaps you want to binge listen to them, or maybe you want to listen to one per day during a walk over the next week or so. Regardless, I hope that you find this collection of interviews helpful.

If there are any people who are smashing it in the online learning space whom you’d like me to interview, or any particular topics within online learning that you’d like me to explore, please drop me a line via twitter (@ollie_lovell) or via the email (ollie@ollielovell.com)

Links/resources mentioned in the show (Can also view in each of the chapters)

Chapter 1: Courtney Ostaff on online maths teaching and collaboration (West Virginia, USA)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • The most important thing! A week by week setup that clearly lists what students are to do by day and by week. Place assignment files, links to outside resources, links to key areas inside the learning system, your slides from the live lectures, places to upload homework, etc all in one place. Set it up as a checklist that parents can print off and post on the refrigerator, and as a day-by-day calendar so they aren’t overwhelmed. 
      • When supporting students to collaborate and respond to each other, they need to do two different things. 1. Be clear enough that you can see what they’re responding to. 2. Contribute something new. See syllabus document ‘Meaningful contribution’
      • Example lesson link: www.wtmacademy.com  https://youtu.be/96i8CBnzLQs ← Can see a sample lesson from Courtney here
      • Don’t grade everything yourself. Autograde when possible, use auto-summing rubrics. One or two quality summative assessments per week is plenty. It can take much longer to grade online.

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

PS! Resources I forgot to mention during our interview:

      • CK-12 (high quality secondary math and science–web-based texts and downloadable texts and workbooks, all free)
      • Gutenberg.org and Archive.org (free books, downloadable or web-based, many available direct to screen readers for the visually impaired)
      • LibriVox (free audiobooks for all ages)
      • Bookshare.org for learners with print disabilities (free to US students, sliding annual fees worldwide)
      • Books for professional development: John Catt Educational Publishers 

To find out more

Chapter 2: Kerrie Russell on relationships and online learning through the Alice Springs School of the Air (Alice Springs, Australia)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • Daily ‘morning muster’- 15 mins session for each class- teachers can ‘check in’ with their students, students catch up with each other’s news
      • Each teacher devises a timetable for their class, so the students and their home tutors know when they log in for online lessons, when they work on each subject off line, when to fit in physical activity
      • Weekly ‘PLT’, private lesson time. That’s scheduled each week, but students can also ask for it. 
      • Positive relationships and wellbeing are foundational for learning
      • We prefer synchronous learning- students learn by discussing, engaging, it builds relationships

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

      • React: Video conferencing via satellite. Can see and hear teacher and classmates. 
      • Google classroom for submitting work

To find out more

Chapter 3: Steven Kolber on creating instructional videos (Melbourne, Australia)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • Keep videos shorter than 3 minutes

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

      • OBS Studio, Screencasto, Screencastify, Loom
      • Flipgrid, short video conversations. Can make short videos with any tech tools.
        • Or OBS Studio. 
      • Perusal, Google docs, Kami
        • Steve models with a doc camera and a real book.
      • Video isn’t necessary. Can do quick comments
      • Onenote, works well if surface pro with stylus. 

To find out more

Chapter 4: Sally Richmond and Yooah Nguyen on how to shift your Primary or Elementary school to online learning (Beijing, China)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • Stay connected with your community – face to face conversations are so important in helping people to feel a bit of normality in very exceptional circumstances.
      • Be open and transparent with all community members – for example, if you are trying something new and you are not sure how it is going to work, tell them this and learn to laugh at yourself when you make mistakes!
      • Be flexible and open-minded in these exceptional times.
      • Always assume positive intent!

Our favourite tools (and a brief description)

      • Seesaw
      • Zoom
      • Microsoft Teams (MS One Note) 
      • Calendly to book time slots (has Zoom integration) 
      • iMovie, Quicktime, Stream, Loom, Handbrake to compress
      • Surveys: Microsoft forms
      • Padlet

To find out more

      • You can find our online learning journey here and it includes our guidelines, helpful websites/apps, etc. http://bit.ly/bcisonlinelearning 
      • Yooah’s Twitter @yooahsilly
      • Sally’s Twitter @MrsMoo_02 

Chapter 5: Bianca Li-Rosi, An EAL Teacher’s Perspective on Online Teaching (Jeju, South Korea)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • Less is more – instead of planning an 80 minute lesson for example, plan a 50 minute lesson and set optional challenge activities as what normally takes x minutes in class, takes a decent percentage more online (self regulation as an adolescent is a challenge!)
      • Be patient, be flexible and know that there will be lots of failures and that is okay – be kind to yourself!
      • The comment bank on Google Classroom is a game-changer.
      • Create a standing desk for yourself.
      • Stay connected with colleagues and encourage/facilitate ways for students to stay connected with each other – wellbeing is the number one priority for all 

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

      • Google classroom (total G-suite of products)
      • Flipgrid
      • Zoom over Google Meet (Zoom has breakout rooms)
      • Padlet, blank canvas type of tool… but not offering premium access in goodwill. 
      • Scribl for digital annotations 
      • Go Formative
      • Great (some EAL specific) resources for Online Learning that I didn’t mention: 
        • GrammarFlip (grammar exercises and writing activities – I personally like this more than Quill and NoRedInk, it seems more intuitive)
        • ReadTheory (adaptive reading comprehension activities)
        • ESL Library (EAL resources covering all macro skills)
        • The Writing Revolution (needs no introduction, this book is just everything – many resources have been made available online during the pandemic)

To find out more

https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancalirosi/ (not very active on social media unless food is involved)

I’m also a huge fan of the following blogs and have found them to be invaluable (all the time, but even more so now that we’re Online):

      • Alison Yang – a great blog for teachers, especially those who teach MYP Language Acquisition
      • Tan’s, ‘Empowering ELL’s’ blog – a must-follow blog for EAL teachers
      • Thinking Pathwayz – a website dedicate to visible thinking routines that has fantastic templates and different approaches to using VTRs

Chapter 6 – Ellen Heyting, A Psychology and Humanities Teacher’s Perspective on Online Teaching (Helsinki, Finland)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • CC in parents. 
      • Don’t expect your online classroom to mirror your F2F classroom – it will be different and that’s ok
      • Less is more
      • Embrace asynchronous learning with smaller, shorter synchronous sessions 
      • Provide info in more than one format – say it and write it
      • Provide choice in asynchronous tasks / resources when possible – eg maybe a reading, a podcast and a video 
      • Assume students are working together (or with their parents/tutors), so make this a feature of the tasks
      • Build in and model time to be active and outdoors (while socially distanced) into the day

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

      • Zoom, face to face comms
      • Loom, for screencasting
      • Gap minder
      • https://www.wab.edu/online-learning
      • Snap Camera (for building community and student engagement)
      • Google Docs and the whole Google for Ed suite
      • Crash Course Youtube channel
      • Quizlet Live
      • Virtual Field Trips
      • Epic Books (free subscriptions for students and schools till June 20)
      • Rosetta Stone (free for students for 3 months)
      • House Party App (for kids to use to stay connected with each other)

To find out more

      • Which twitter people? 
      • @WAB_Live
      • @BCISonline
      • @KlBeasley
      • @EduroLearning

Chapter 7 – Nadine Bailey, A teacher librarian/tech integrator's Perspective on Online Teaching (Beijing, China) (Beijing, China)

Nuggets of wisdom

      • Try to understand why students aren’t attending?
      • Two face to face occurrences each week. 
      • Schedule sessions across various times of the day, sharing teachers.
      • Ween students off individual emails!
      • Rather than talk about tools, you should say ‘What are my needs?’

My favourite tools (and a brief description)

Here is our guide with links to pages explaining use of each https://library.wab.edu/ms/OnlineLearning/Teachers

To find out more

Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.

Related