Everybody knows that high quality teachers customize their instruction based on students needs. The need of customization combined with adherence to standards becomes even more important when teachers need to teach online. Online and virtual environments have a tendency to diminish the intrinsic motivation of students. It is only natural: the lack of social interaction, the mixed signals the students receive from the authorities, the perception that technology may be a barrier to learning all these are factors that contribute. For those reasons it is very important for the teacher to become ..read more

Over the last six month Google Class picked up a lot of traction. Used in conjunction with zoom, Google Meet or other web conference platforms Google Class helped many teachers around the country manage their classes. Amid COVID19 teachers felt safer with a solid cloud based platform like Class even if many other options for similar platforms were available. Even though Google was not traditionally a software for edu company, over the last years they made great progress with their online interactive tools for students and teachers. Google's G Suite is currently used in many high schools a ..read more

Canvas is an Learning Management System that gained a lot of traction during COVID-19. I quote: "Canvas is a cloud-based LMS that excels at providing the core learning management functions efficiently and effectively." Traditionally used in colleges and universities, Canvas was more recently mandated in a lot of US based high schools and middle schools as well.  As a middle school or high school teacher, here are some of the things you can do in Canvas: - Manage your classes - Design, organize full online courses - Provide extensive content to your students - Assign work and grade ..read more

Tools and Techniques For the Modern Teacher: Student assessments in an online environment: Last quarter we had a lot of discussions on assessments and grading. As teachers we had to take into account the very unusual situation we w ..read more

Last quarter we had a lot of discussions on assessments and grading. As teachers we had to take into account the very unusual situation we were in and the fact that we were teaching online. At the same time, we had to maintain the instruction process relevant and enriching for our students. So I personally did things like hands-on projects, online quizzes, notes, in-class formative assessments, presentations and tests.  Over the summer I had a chance to reflect more on this. I feel it's an important topic so here are some thoughts on assessments.  1. Questions and answers (Q& ..read more

1. Going back to school poll’s results Interesting results, right? Let’s try to interpret the data. First poll had a total of 69 respondents. Out of these 69 teachers 52% indicated they did not know how their school will reopen this fall, 23% indicated they are going back to class, 12% said their school will implement a hybrid model and 13% said their school will go virtual / online. The second poll had 115 respondents. Out them 59% responded they did not know how their school will reopen, 30% said it was decided to go virtual, 10.5% are going to back to class and 10.5% will do a hybrid ..read more

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Fig. 1 Teacher working online Many teachers are off for the summer. Some of them are paid over the summer, some others are not. Whatever your situation as a teacher, you know there is room to generate extra income. Teachers asked me what is they can do to make a buck while still enjoying their summer time, pursuing Professional Development and generally speaking utilizing their time in a smart way. Here I put together a list of income generating activities. A lot of these I tried myself with very decent results. And a lot of these do work in the current environment as well, which ..read more

Fig.1 Digital Recording Equipment As a teacher you have to lecture quite a bit! Lecturing is hard on you: it consumes you physically and emotionally as you are using your voice a lot. At the same time, lecturing the same material multiple times the same day (or even multiple times the same week) can get boring.  A lot of teachers nowadays up-ed their game and started to use audio and video digital recorders.  Digital records are neither new, nor complicated to use. In fact they were around for more than two decades. However, with the unfortunate new outbreaks of the Coron ..read more

Fig. 1 Engaged Students Amid COVID-19 students engagement is going down or staying flat at its best. Some students simply refuse to turn on their video cameras, some others do but they don't participate to class and some others are absent. Other students participate during the virtual class but, for some reason, decide not to turn in any homework! Generally the students who do well in class do well during the virtual classes too but there are always exceptions. And then you will always have the "geeks", the students who will actually do better online than in class!  So how do ..read more