Classroom Management

How does a lead teacher control what occurs inside distant classrooms, perhaps many miles away?

First, it is vital to have a teaching partner at each receiving site in the classroom with students. Their task is to assist the lead teacher in achieving course goals and objectives, and they are essential for successful classroom management. The success or failure of videoconference classroom experiences is often directly related to the support of the teaching partner. In addition, classroom management consists of three issue areas: time, motivation, and communication.

Time

Videoconference instruction will take more time to prepare and deliver than a teacher new to the lead role expects it will take not only because of the technology, but also because of the number of sites and students involved. Preparation, production, communication, and instruction time will likely be more than double that of a regular, live course.

Start class with a count down clock, so that all sites will begin class on the lead teacher's schedule.
Set reasonable deadlines for activities and projects.
Plan flexible activities and projects so that objectives and time can be adjusted. This is more important when lead teachers are working with multiple receiving sites. Allow sites to complete activities before moving on. Those sites that are really focused on an activity and exploring its possibilities should have the time to do so without feeling that they are behind schedule and must rush to finish. Have an extra credit activity or challenge activity for those that may finish early.
Use a clock on screen when students are working in class.
Avoid trying to troubleshoot technology and connectivity problems on the air during class; have a backup plan in case the videoconferencing technology fails.
Save time during demonstrations by preparing finished examples of the steps to be completed in a project.
Lead teachers should not ask students to complete a project step-by-step with them during a videoconference class, because such projects entail time management and classroom management problems. Several sites will finish early and others will take much longer; early finishers will be-come distracted while late finishers will feel rushed.

Motivation

Motivation: The technology of videoconferencing helps to motivate students, who see that they can share their work with a broad audience.

Be enthusiastic and flexible--a sense of humor is a valuable asset.
Connect sites in a conference and have students from several classrooms solve a problem collaboratively.
Have students introduce themselves and participate in a project that provides information about their interests, hobbies and goals.
Encourage student questions and interactions.
Award points for answering questions and participating in class activities.
Encourage and assign group work. Students enjoy working together.
Assign investigations and field trips to provide students with opportunities to work together outside the classroom. Students can share information with videoconference classmates. Students enjoy sharing their work and are motivated to do their best work when they know they will publish and share.
A Web site makes a great bulletin board or gallery for a videoconference class.
Presentation software, Web software, digital cameras, and scanners are excellent ways to publish student work.
Students are interested in videoconferencing technology and should be encouraged to use it.
Encourage the use of "e-mail pals" to solve questions and problems.
Videoconference classes should be interactive and the pacing dynamic, so that students miss im-portant information if they are not paying attention.

Communication

Course design and delivery is student-centered, so projects must be clearly defined, well organized, and communicated simply. Communication should occur before, during and after instruction. Feedback is important so that instruction can be modified to address student and staff needs.

The lead teacher must provide instructions and feedback in a clear and simple manner.
Lead teachers must let students know who they are. Lead teachers should share personal interests and experiences in order to become real to students. Students tend to view lead teachers as television celebrities.
Lead teachers should use specific student names as often as possible when asking for a site response.
The class should include time for students to communicate and share with one another.
Lead teachers must be aware that "body language" is exaggerated via videoconference. Lead teachers should use gestures and facial expressions communicate a friendly, caring and confident demeanor.
The teaching partner or site facilitator becomes the lead teacher's "eyes" in the classroom. Lead teachers need to check on what is going on in receiving site classrooms on a regular basis, and to emphasize that they want to be aware of any problems immediately in order to adjust course delivery.
The teaching partner must communicate problems and needs immediately. This includes missing supplies, unclear instructions or lesson plans and any classroom management problems relating to course delivery. The special needs of students must likewise be communicated to the lead teacher.
It is important for teaching partners to communicate positive things that occur during delivery of a videoconference course, because lead teachers have few peers or colleagues with whom to share their experiences or from whom to hear about similar experiences. Positive feedback is important!
Lead teachers should use site-to-site videoconferences as well as one-to-many sites. A site-to-site conference lends itself to personal communication between the lead teacher and students at one site. Students feel more comfortable in communicating problems they may be having when other sites are not connected.

It is difficult for a teacher who is used to controlling the tempo and content of their class to give that over to another teacher. It is hard for them to remember that they are not always aware of what is happening at the other sites that influences tempo and content. My own experience as a teaching partner showed me that. In one case I was a teaching partner in a math class that I was qualified to teach and I had a hard time relying on the judgment of the lead teacher when I could see other avenues that were open to my class even though I was aware that there were reasons for the decisions he was mak-ing. My other experience was as a partner in an art class, which was outside my area of preparation, and I had fewer problems there because I did not have strong opinions about how to conduct the class.

To avoid this it is important that lead teachers communicate clearly not only what they need but also why it is needed. The best teaching partners will hold opinions, will want the best for their students, and will want to know the why as well as the what. The lead teacher should want their honest feedback about how things are going, listen to any ideas they have, and collaborate on strategies as much as possible. But it needs to be understood that lead teachers make the final choices and set the direction of videoconference courses because they have a better overview of what is happening in their classes as a whole.

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