When COVID-19 separated my team of teachers from our students, we were forced to bring our school online, and fast. This experience was essential in shaping my principles for remote learning: community, accountability, and spontaneity.
The classroom is like a little country, with its own culture. Our job as educators is to help shape that culture into one that promotes learning, where the pursuit of knowledge is a group effort. The same principle can be applied online. We use software that is especially made for online community-building, our own safe little corner of the internet.
Now, what about homework? It seems to be a truism, that as long as there was homework, there were students trying to get out of it! One might be tempted to think that remote learning must forfeit homework altogether. Not so! My experience teaches me that two things are needed to ensure that students are held accountable, and these principles apply equally in the classroom: structured routine and clear communication. We are blessed to live in a time where we have the technological tools to not only give students these things from a distance, but to do it more effectively than ever before!
But the question remains: how can you move a classroom online? How do you replicate that energy? This, no doubt, is a great challenge for us remote educators, but with a mastery of the tools, the results are surprising. I’m a big believer in a combination of live instruction and independent study, giving students the best of both worlds: engaging content with the support and dynamism of a live classroom.
If you want to learn more about our methods, just go over to the connect page, where you can shoot us an email. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have.