Online Teachers@Work Symposium
Examples of Effective Practices
Social Studies:
"One of the first assignments I given any of my students when they come into the course is a time management unit. I carry it out for a four-week period when they actually do their schedules. I'd like to say that it's a great success. I keep modifying it to make it better and some kids really buy into it. I think teaching time management is one way to address the problem of completion rate. We have to give the kids the tools and processes to succeed."
"For one of my classes, I use the song, 'Imagine' by John Lennon to teach about boundaries. The song ties into immigration and human rights. It's a good transition into that assignment and it works like magic because for a lot of these kids, music is it and is one way to get them in the front door. Maybe the secret to motivating a lot of those kids who haven't bought in yet or who are failing at online learning is to give them opportunities to use their personalities. Many of these kids are all over the place and we have to find a way to connect somehow to their ADD or whatever makes them that way."
"When I am teaching about a particular era or a certain incident, I ask the students to send me digital postcards to let me know what was going on at the time as though they were experiencing it or witnessing it themselves. When studying particular individuals, I have them create the text on the back of a digital trading card, just like the old sports cards. Some students develop electronic scrap books. I develop a "hot topics" list for social studies unit requirements. For example, when I teach about the history of intolerance, I have the students do Web searches and actually prepare their own "hot topics" lists that they think must be covered to fully understand the topic. These are ways I get back from students so that I know what they are learning."
"Discussion is crucial, especially to a Current World Problems class. We use online threaded discussions to support our instructional goals, which are to teach students how to use evidence that they discovered in previous assignments, how to write persuasively, and how to give both sides of an argument."
"When I give a research project in U.S. History and Social Studies, I don't tell my students what I want them to learn. What they research for the project is up to them. One girl was interested in women leaders. She went back as far as she could in history and wrote a paragraph about every woman leader she could find. She turned in 15 pages of material. She was so interested, she kept digging deeper. We can't assign projects like that. Those kinds of projects must come from the student's own curiosity and interest."
Math:
"In geometry to teach triangle congruency, I have the students use straws and construction paper to go through triangle congruency short cuts. For some reason they like the idea of going to Burger King to get the straws. They go home, cut up the straws, and then e-mail me to tell me which combinations are true short cuts and which aren't. It makes sense to them when they see it concretely."
"A hybrid approach works best with online math teaching because there is no canned math program from any vendor that doesn't have technical problems but most importantly that even gets close to teaching math the way all kids need to learn it."
"We use McGraw-Hill as a back-up for the homegrown lessons we develop using Tegrity streaming video. We record our lessons and then create a streaming video that students can go to. We run a PowerPoint presentation in a tape machine while we discuss the lesson with added voice-overs and pointers and underlining for emphasis. So the students see me there talking about the lesson and they see me writing just as though I were there writing and speaking in real time. I support different learning modalities by expanding and annotating what is in the text to make the lessons so much richer."
"When you have a high percentage of your students on a dial-up connection, bandwidth and connectivity are issues. If you take your Web course and deliver it on CD, the links will still take them to Internet sources but you have eliminated an enormous number of technical problems. And if the work on the CD is sequentially ordered, when they click on the Tegrity presentation it only goes out to the URL for that piece of the lesson. Now the only limitations are home computer speeds. I have found that keeping it simple is better because it reduces technical problems."
"In our Math department, we create PowerPoint lessons and use Encoder to capture any audio or video on the screen. They can watch the PowerPoint or the video. I try not to make my videos more than three minutes to avoid dial-up connection problems. Each concept is in a unit and students click on each concept to read the notes. They can print out the lesson, fill in the blanks as they take notes, and take an instant quiz to get instant feedback on their progress. If they need additional support I send them out to Web-based resources."
"To slow them down through the canned curriculum and to get them to work on math daily to get the cumulative benefit, I require homework. I use the worksheets that are included and it slows them down enough so that they are taking notes. I also require them to go back and identify ten items on each lesson's worksheet that are critical to understanding the concept. Their grade is based on that so they can't just randomly run through the worksheets. Some of the students end up with 11 pages of worksheets so they are really taking the time to evaluate what is important to understand in each section. And I help pace them by reminding them each week with an e-mail announcement of how much material they should be through at this point in time."
"With the use of a Casio online calculator emulator, I do conic sections by giving the students one form and then start changing all the signs, start changing the leading coefficient, and by the time they have done 20 or 30 of those, I can give them an equation that they can recognize as a parabola and know its functions. Really, at the end of the class period, students can look at the equations and know the shape of the conic section. And by buying the site emulator license, all the students can all be trained at once and then use the one site calculator online."
"I don't think we do a good job of articulating the value of math. We are as much to blame as the parents for not emphasizing how important math skills are in everyday life. I develop my lessons using everyday kinds of problems that you need math skills to solve. I use the practical problem of replacing the washing machine drain pipe and figuring out how wide the pipe must be without getting plugged up with the laundry."
Language Arts:
"More than half our student body is at-risk. We know that if they don't have the skills to start, they are not going to finish. So the first thing I have them do is write an essay to evaluate skill level. Then I teach them keyboarding skills. Then I give them young adult literature re-written at their own low reading level. They not only learn to read and to write their ideas, but they learn to believe in their own abilities."
"I do a multi-genre project called 'reaching for your roots' that requires them to research their backgrounds through memoirs or genealogical search. This uncovers family difficulties and secrets sometimes, like undisclosed adoptions. We also have a career unit in which they research various career opportunities, interview professionals in various fields, and write a resume for a chosen career based on real life job requirements."
"We build our own courses based on our own district framework and state standards, although we do have textbooks to fall back on. My courses are heavily linked to outside Web sites so success depends on redundancy. I usually provide five Internet sources for each reference, which requires time-consuming research and site validation. Before I introduce the course to students, I have a peer review. Optimally, another teacher will teach the course as part of the piloting process. I ask my students to provide feedback on any problems, errors, unclear assignment or elements that don't work properly, or tasks that are too difficult or too easy. I give them credit for every observation or critique they offer."
"When I work with LEP students, material is presented in many formats: they get to see it, write it, hear it, and speak it. The students can go back to the same material over and over again studying it as long as it takes them to understand and use the language. What I might have given five minutes in the classroom is available to them for as long as they need to get it."
"Discussion is so necessary in language arts courses and presents a challenge online. In some cases we do have synchronous discussions but that is rare. Mostly we rely on threaded discussions but our students enroll at different times and are at different stages of the course which makes discussion difficult. What I do is introduce some questions that are general enough so that all students can relate it to the material regardless of where they are in the course. These questions usually generate lively threaded discussions." "We are working to integrate the content areas and I work with the social studies and science teachers to create project-based curricula that involve lots of writing and authentic assessments. They have some multiple choice and self-graded assessments, I use only written work as a basis for assessments."
"Student-centered and project-based learning are the truly important elements of online teaching and what differentiates it from in-classroom teaching. With my online courses, lessons build over time to culminate in a final project. For example, an early unit on the basic paragraph requires students to write rough and final drafts that incorporate elements like point of view and voice. Then they move to advanced paragraphs that grow into essays that reflect an integration of what they have been studying as well as the techniques they have learned. I think this is a more holistic approach and the final projects are more authentic assessments of what they know and can do."
"Peer editing, peer review, and peer revision are very important aspects of my language arts courses. I have found it difficult to do group projects with my online students because with asynchronous communication all the students are not engaged in the same simultaneous process as they are in the classroom. Online you have to decide what outcome you are going for and then teach it."
"Much of the interaction between students depends on the kind of community you have helped them to develop and how much trust they have in each other. Writers will share their work and accept feedback from their peers. It is definitely a requirement of our state standards that students learn to evaluate their own work and that of their peers according to established criteria but they only learn to become better writers through this process if they trust each other."
Science
"I have one experiment about the conduction of heat using different spoons and hot water. The students have to put a little bead of butter at the end of the spoon and stick the spoon in hot water. And they do it with a plastic spoon, a wooden spoon, and a metal spoon. Then they do it with margarine instead of butter, which doesn't melt. One student said that he didn't have any butter at home so we had to improvise. I suggested he take each spoon and hold it under water and report what he felt when he touched each spoon. He felt the metal spoon was hot. He was able to understand the concept and write his modified method into his lab report."
"I am thinking that at the content level of online learning, we are able to meet our student's individual needs, let them grow, and then let them go. A girl in my physical science class was doing a project on acid rain. She was a good artist. Se went online to find the main areas of land that have been impacted and began sketching the land masses. Then she used software to re-create her drawings but showing the land masses before the acid rain damage. She created a little gem of a project that said it all in pictures."
"It's pretty straightforward and doesn't use too much memory to animate images for my PE class. Instead of having students looking at people stretching, the image goes from one stretch to another and then they link to Web sites that explain the stretches as the graphic images move. This is what kids are used to seeing in video games and it really grabs their attention."
"When the students are doing physics experiments they might have to run up and flight of stairs with someone timing them. They weigh themselves, convert to metric, calculate the work done, the force, and the acceleration. The students are doing this themselves and it costs them nothing."
"To demonstrate, 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,' I have students put on roller skates or use a skateboard and then throw balls against a wall to see what happens. Depending on the smoothness of the surface they learn that they will push away in the opposite direction. They learn how to do the calculations for this process."
"With microbiology we use camera microscopes that stream video of whatever we are working with, perhaps a certain type of cell. We videotape the image and edit it to add pointers and labels, then stream it. Students look at the streaming video while considering the questions I've asked and answer them while examining the specimen. This is one case when online labs work better than in-classroom labs because everyone is seeing the same thing."
"I do a DNA fingerprinting lab where we run gels. Students can actually run the gels themselves and see the process. There are so many simulations online that do this better and get exact results but it is a more significant learning experience when students get to run the gels. Of course, the teacher has to use hazardous chemicals that the kids don't see because we don't use the camera to take pictures of what the gels look like."
"The model we use is inquiry-based. They get the content but don't spend much time on it separate from the inquiry-based projects they do to cement the scientific concepts and skills. No matter how much time they spent rote learning abstract scientific concepts, they always remember the concepts they learned by doing a really cool project."
"When I have my chemistry class do the chromatography lab, I have them try different approaches. I give them the coffee filters and paper towels and then I ask them choose from a list of different procedures. Recently the lab had them determine what caused the changing leaves in autumn. They use digital photography or a scanner to capture the process and send the images with every step of the process labeled in black ink pen. We have discussions of the results and discuss newspaper articles about events that demonstrate natural processes. I ask them to critique the articles based upon what they've learned through scientific inquiry."
"I try to reinforce research and writing skills with every lab I assign so that they become better readers, note takers, and writers. We choose the online version of a newspaper and pick an article about some area of health or science we are studying. I ask them to find a science article in the archives about the topic, summarize the article and then send in the summary and the article. I have them read the article for factual information to reinforce their reading, research, and analytic skills."
"All our health and science classes are built in HTML so they are graphics rich and students can use the material in any kind of work they do. For our cardio-respiratory unit, all these graphics are included with support material as well as an outline of the subject. The muscle unit has 380 instructional videos and students can select a weight and a muscle, pull up a video of that muscle at work. Students learn how to work out and how to count repetitions. To learn how to build and exercise biceps they get all the information they need about their biceps, what they need to do, and how to work all the related muscles. They can get a video showing the exercise and how to do a proper barbell curl. For the physiology course, students have to go through family medical history, the cardio respiratory system, nutrition, muscular endurance, and flexibility."
"We try to integrate other content areas and cultural aspects into our units. I do an astronomy class in which we learn about constellations. We study the Greco-Roman names and interpretations of the constellations but we all study what the Native American Indians named the constellations and their legends about them. We go one step further and do a scientific analysis using the scientific method on an American Indian legend. I ask them to apply the scientific method to prove or disprove the interpretation."
"I tell my students that when they learn the scientific method, they have acquired a procedure they can apply to anything in their lives. What have you got? What do you know? What do you think will happen? What is a good question to ask? They can set up the scientific method for figuring out any problem in life. They set up the procedure and do it. Write down the results of the test. Formulate a conclusion. Figure out what it all means. It's a way to think through anything."
Electives
"There is a technique in negotiations called, 'negotiating backwards,' where you determine the outcome first and then work your way back to determine the pieces that you are going to need to reach that outcome. I would suggest that we need to look at that as a model for the development of online electives coursework. If experience in the community is an essential piece for learning the lesson, it may play out very differently in Everett than in Washtuckna. The one in Washtuckna may have to be virtual...an online community connection rather than face-to-face. We have to put develop whatever tasks it will take to get the student to the expected outcome."
Physical Education:
"I make animated GIF images using Microsoft GIF Animator to demonstrate a series of stretches that students go through for class. Rather than looking at people stretching, the image goes from one stretch to another. It's just a simple little animation that the student clicks on to go to the Web site that explains all the stretches, hooked up with graphic images that are moving. It just grabs their attention and gets them into the activity."
Elementary Education
"If K-12.com virtual academies are in eight states, are the kids in Georgia talking to the kids in Pennsylvania? Are they working on history projects together and exchanging historic photographs? Are they being assigned to use their digital cameras to photograph historic buildings in Savannah and Philadelphia that they can exchange? I use this as an amazing opportunity for kids to get the kind of education that they can't get in the face-to-face classroom. In the effort to make our online version as close to the face-to-face version as possible eliminates the world of possibilities that online education offers."
"Some of the states require online elementary teachers to meet once a week with every child in the school. By inviting all the children and their families in at the same time, like on a Friday to do cool projects together, they form a big community. It helps the online school grow stronger when the children and parents get to know each other."
"We can't expect elementary students to be sitting in front of a computer. When I teach science lessons, I take an interactive approach, talking to the kids as if they were right in front of me. I do a prism project using Jell-o that the kids love. All of our online science lessons are project-based. We move them away from the computer almost immediately and get them into hands-on activity. They come back to the computer only when they are ready for the next step."
"To be sure that the elementary students are really moving through the work, we require them to do a weekly review of what they have learned that week."
"We include the scoring rubric as part of every writing lesson as well as oral and creative book reports. That way, students know what is expected of them and take responsibility for what they get out of each lesson."
"My K-3 students study printing and cursive handwriting. Then in the fourth grade, they study keyboarding. Since all their assessments after fourth grade require proficient keyboarding, they are required to study it. And the students say it saves them time with their work."
"We use conference calling for our weekly staff meetings but meet face-to-face once a month."
"We do an architectural project that requires students to research famous structures from the modern and historic worlds. As they research the building, they draw a scale model using mathematics to calculate the proportions. The students all connect with each other through the First Class E-mail account to discuss building styles, interesting historic facts, and to recommend pertinent links. The students earn "funny" money for going beyond basic requirements, for example, for choosing multiple, complex, or ancient buildings. I encourage them to seek out buildings from antiquity and not choose the box-shaped local stores. If they are in proximity to other students, they may choose to pool their money to buy building supplies, usually toothpicks, gumdrops and connectors, and build their buildings together. I find that when they move to the building stage, the more money they have, the taller, stronger, bigger, and fancier building they will build. Usually, they seek out others who have worked hard and researched more too. At the end, we get together to measure and stress test the buildings. We give awards for the strongest, the most cost effective, and the tallest building built with the least amount of material. The project is usually three weeks (about an hour a day) but if kids work together it could take up to six weeks."
"For my eighth grade cooking class, students not only share their recipes and techniques but also photograph their projects which they send along with their write-ups."
"A travel project has the students traveling around the world with a budget of $50,000. They have to visit every continent using Travelocity to book flights and hotels. This combines their geography and foreign language curricula. It requires critical thinking and planning. This year we are partnering in-classroom students with online students to make the trip. They used First Class E-mail program to live chat about their project and we used threaded discussion for key questions."