Page 12 - THE Journal Innovation in Education, October 2021
P. 12
Innovation in Education | CLASS – learn more at class.com
Virtual is Here to Stay, so Make It Better
There’s little reason to think online or virtual education will go away. It’s time for schools to make sure it’s not a lesser experience.
Elfreda Massie
VP of K-12 Strategy Class
WITH THE RETURN TO THE PHYSICAL
classroom, you might think schools should
tuck away their Zoom licenses for the next time an emergency strikes. But that would be short-sighted. Educators have seen how technology can play a role in delivering learning options for students who can’t attend in person. Now that K-12 administrators are reimagining and redesigning education, school districts would be foolish not to learn from their pandemic experiences. Their big lesson? Schools need virtual options.
They need them for students who, because of physical, emotional or mental disabilities, can’t be in the classroom; who have dropped out just shy of a few credits and really want to earn that diploma; who are working to support their families; who are taking care of younger siblings; or who want to participate in dual enrollment and can’t get the unique classes they need through their own schools.
Those virtual options can also be vital in emergencies: bad weather, fire closures, surges in COVID cases, and on- site staffing shortages. Long term, there are those events we don’t even notice anymore because they’re ingrained in our traditional model — summer break, winter break, and spring break.
Schools have realized that they need to have a strategy that helps them ensure continuity of learning throughout disruptions, which every district in the country faces.
Encouragement, Motivation and
Teacher Attention
Educators have also figured out that it’s not enough to turn on the webcam and microphone and expect students to show up and learn. Just like in the physical setting, they need encouragement, motivation, teacher attention, and clear expectations to stay engaged.
Take one example: the concept of breakout rooms. Teachers want to group students, whether to have each group work on different activities, create student agency, or some other reason. While Zoom offers a breakout room
feature, the functionality caters to motivated adults more than semi-bored kids.
The teacher needs the ability to see all of the breakout rooms together or move through them and hear what the students are covering, join them in a chat, provide separate assignments or links, and monitor their participation. Those activities are much easier to perform when everybody’s in the same physical space, but there’s no reason teachers shouldn’t also be able to achieve them in a virtual setting too.
Virtual Learning at the Highest Level
Replicating the physical learning experience in the virtual classroom is the thinking behind Class. Founded by Michael Chasen, a parent and education technologist who watched his own three kids struggle through remote pandemic learning, Class is intended to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn at the highest levels.
That means having:
A podium where the teacher can always be located and identified
A “front of the room,” where students can serve as presenters
Tabs for organizing all of the digital activities and resources — assessments, videos, assignments, web pages, lesson plans, learning management systems — everything the teacher will want to pull up during the lesson and refer to or share with the class, without anybody having to depart from the Class interface
Discussions where teachers and students can hold private one-on-one or one-to-several conversations
Hand raises that communicate more than “call on me,” such as “slow down”, “I don’t understand” or “I missed something...”
Polling for the teacher to do quick checks on student well-being and on student understanding
Enhanced breakout rooms that allow teachers to monitor activity across all breakouts and even send content to specific groups
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