Teachers, which subject is easiest to switch to an online format?
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Anonymous
Yes I am answering it. Using reasoning, all grades with students who are able to read are easiest to teach online. |
Anonymous
Have you read any of the responses? Do you realize that in a flipped classroom the students receive one-on-one time with their teachers during the live sessions held during the school day? I don't understand how one-on-one time between a teacher and a student constitute taking "the human element out of education." Would you elaborate? |
Anonymous
How were creating the slides cumbersome? Didn't you already have the slides? I agree working out the problems on the computer is tricky. |
Anonymous
My DH teaches HS math and he also had to create all of the slides. He doesn't use slides to teach in class. |
Anonymous
[b] I teach at the elementary level. There were no slideshows prepared for teachers to use. I spent so much time creating slides for both reading and math. Both curriculums (Eureka & Benchmark)were new for me/my students. For reading, a lot of vocabulary supports were needed for my students/ELL. Despite working with many of them one-on-one teaching them how to access BM, many of the students never opened a book on Benchmark. This meant I also created slides with the texts the kids were supposed to read. Similarly with math, many of my students were not watching the math videos, so using zoom time for “debriefing” was meaningless since they were coming to class without having watched the videos or worked on any practice problems. I created slides with vocabulary, sample problems, answer keys (I solved all the problems for every lesson myself, scanned them and put them in every slideshow I made.) These are just a few examples. I literally made a slideshow for every single lesson I taught every day of distance learning. I posted all the slideshows each day so both students and parents would have access to everything we covered during class. |
Anonymous
I don't know anyone in math who has prepared slides to use from "before." We're all making them up. In math it is a little more cumbersome because of all the special characters, exponents, etc. Now there is an equation writer software to help write equations but there still are a lot of steps. For example, with the equation writer software you can fractions so you don't type 3/4 (slanted fraction bar is NOT good) anymore but it still takes 6 or 7 steps to type 3/4 correctly, without a slanted fraction bar. the only acceptable way to write a fraction is using a horizontal fraction bar 3 not 3/4 4 |
Anonymous
Sorry what I meant was that the question was "what was easiest" and your answer seems to be "when the kids can't read". In my experience, the kids who can't read are the hardest, and parents who can't read make it harder. I'm thinking you agree, and just flipped the question in your mind, but I wanted to check. |
Anonymous
I'm the special ed teacher above, and I'll say that I make my slides by handwriting on an iPad, and taking screenshots, I often drop in photos of manipulatives. If I didn't have an iPad, I think I'd handwrite on a whiteboard and take pictures. I also screenshare from my iPad and write as I talk, or show virtual manipulatives a lot. I may be teaching a lower level of math than you, although the calculus teachers at my school tell me they do the same thing. To answer the top PP, for me at least I can't use the same materials from before, because before I might have set it up with physical materials, and had the kids look at them. Or I would have taught with a game that doesn't translate online. So, all my materials are either new, created by me, or new to me but created by someone else. |
Anonymous
+1 I teach calculus and do not have an iPad. So I had to type out all of the steps to the problems and then film myself going through the problems. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. There were also discovery activities I do in class that I had to convert to an online format, and it didn't just involve taking the Word document and sharing the screen with students. Also my slides for class are pretty bare and basic because I try to teach using other methods. So I had to flesh out those bare bones slides because I had no efficient way to write on a screen. |
Anonymous
Same! I am the 3rd poster with the 3/4 example. I teach middle school. I don't have an iPad and I had a brain fart on March 13th so I didn't grab my Chromebook when I packed up my laptop. This whole time I was typing it out in PowerPoint or I was handwriting it out with Sharpies and doing screen captures. It wasn't ideal but it got the job done. Now I've gotten my Chromebook (last week of school, timing is everything!) and my new document camera from Amazon also just arrived (last week of school, timing again!). It is what it is. I experienced the same issue with the lack of manipulatives and the discovery activities. It takes a lot of time to find a new way to do it that is compatible with the DL. I've been able to speed up the process as I've figured out what works and what doesn't, but it still takes way longer than it should or than I anticipated. It was a frustrating experience and I was logging in at least 55-60 hours a week. Now I look back though and I see it wasn't all in vain as I put together my gradebook. My participation was much higher than it -felt- like while I was doing it. One class, my lowest class (!!!), had 90% participation. Others were lower but nothing less than 40-50%. If grades had counted I think those classes with the lower yields would have been up close to 100%. I'm happy with the outcomes and I know the kids learned. The kids told me they appreciate the videos and they were helpful. The hardest part for them was figuring out how to use the resources I wanted them to use. I wasn't right there to cover their hand to help them "click here" or "open that box there" because you know how it is with new software, you can get flustered and not see what you need to do to make the apps work. Anyway, OP, despite all this, math likely is the easiest to switch to an online format. It is heck on wheels for math teachers but for kids it probably is much easier to learn math online than something like ELA. I think History also adapts well to online. Spelling for the younger grades may be good online if they're doing word sorts and such. |
Anonymous
Does he write on the whiteboard instead? I thought all teachers used slides now. |
Anonymous
Why wouldn’t anyone in math have slides to use from “before”? |
Anonymous
That's not how my classroom runs. I don't have PowerPoint slides except for my objective, essential question and day's agenda. In F2F I usually have a discovery activity, and students use an activity sheet to record their discoveries, then for classwork either I am writing on the board or using the document camera. Students do independent work and that work is shown on the document camera. To translate that from F2F into DL, I am doing a guided release that involves PowerPoint to walk students through the discovery and act as a doublecheck, with videotapes of me interspersed throughout the lesson. |
Anonymous
I agree math is probably easier than other subjects to learn and teach online. And I agree with PP that my lesson prep time was much more efficient by the end once I figured out what worked and was more comfortable with the technology. |
Anonymous
Interesting. I don’t even have a whiteboard in my classroom. All I have is a smart board. I’m curious, how do your students get notes? Do you give your students handouts of notes or study guides? If your students receive some types of notes from you, don’t you have copies of these that you created for yourself as either a slide or document? |