It seems like remote and hybrid learning may never go away now. So I would love to hear about what has been most successful for you while teaching in this age of COVID-19.
If you have great success stories or cautionary tales, please share them as well!
On Mondays, I go over skills and assignments for the week. It can be confusing to be working on two coding projects at once, so I have students working on VEX VR when they are home 2 days a week and building challenges when they are in class. I do a check in for the remote students in case they have questions during the period. It has worked out well. And now that we are fully in school itās easy for the students to switch from VR to physical robots.
Hi Alaina!
I teach remote students - and I 100% agree that this model isnāt going away next year.
I teach elementary students K-5 and I have found that VEXcode VR is really the best vehicle to get coding engaging again for students virtually in their living rooms.
I like to warm up on a Zoom with a fun hands on challenge. I wish that the students could take their VEX GO home - but alas paper works as well.
I like to do hands - on coding using paper and pencil to express what I want them to learn that day with a challenge like the number line challenge.
For example, today I was teaching my fourth grade students the Castle Crasher lesson on VEXcode VR. Now I did differentiate it - so that students could explore more.
The objective was to make a sequence. I asked students first to make a sequence on their paper. Some students drew numbers or shapes. We shared out.
I then guided them through looking at the difference between forward and move forward 200 mm. Some students wanted to change to inches - just a voice and choice suggestion.
We then worked as a class solving how to move forward. Once we got one part of our code built. I had students work for 5 minutes trying to knock down the first 4 castles together in the middle of the screen.
We then shared our code verbally - or through screen sharing.
Students then started to work on turning and knocking down more castles.
I found that only 20 % of kids could knock down all of the castles in the allotted time - but I found that students wanted to share their code and help others using what sequences they could that worked.
Next time I teach this lesson, Iām going to add more discussion and presentation for students to show how their code worked and help others. I want to delve into break out rooms next week - so I will update this post with what happens.
Let me know what you guys think. Any suggestions are beyond helpful!
Thank you @Anna_Blake and @LORI_COLANGELO for your stories about remote learning!
That sounds like a great balance between building and coding for your students, Lori. I hadnāt thought about the disconnect students might have if they try to work on two different coding projects.
Iām interested in how you had students share your code verbally or through screen-sharing, Anna. I was noodling around in my head an idea about sharing projects so students could all see what the otherās had made and thought about a possibly virtual gallery. Just a google slides presentation with screenshots of each studentās code. Then they could easily reference what worked or didnāt work for other groups.
Not sure how that would work in practice, but another idea to throw out there!
Tagging on to what @Alaina_Caulkett said, it could be a neat idea to use some kind of āvirtual galleryā the way you would use a bulletin board in the classroom, as a place to post āgreatest hitsā or āsuccessful projectsā or āpopular pitfallsā so that kids can have that as a reference during class, in a similar way to how they could use those kinds of resources in the classroom. You could make it a shared google slideshow or something and just post the link in the chat when you break out for solving the challenge time.
Then, when you come back together to share work, you can add things to that slideshow as part of that time, to help give it some structure - like who has something to add to the slides? Just a thought @Anna_Blake, in case itās helpful!
I love this idea @Audra_Selkowitz ! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment back - itās so helpful! Yes I think that would work perfectly! My one friend suggested using Flipgrid - and Iām not familiar enough to use this.
All of my kids have a Google account - so thatās a great recommendation.
I also thought of putting a Canvas Discussion board up as well since Canvas is our LMS.
For next year, Iām going to start the year getting kids used to sharing on a platform - because there are no longer snow days and you never know right?
