Teaching at home and at school

How to be in two places at once

It’s the year 2020 – the setting of several futuristic sci-fi movies like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, Edge of Tomorrow and Pacific Rim – and it’s getting hard not to feel like we’re in a movie ourselves. Everything seemed to change overnight. While we were once teaching in classes brimming with students (some more than they should have been) and high-fiving with reckless abandon, now, for many of us, our teacher desks have become our dining room tables and our high fives, digital waves.

Now, much like the heroes and heroines of these movies, teachers are being called to do what they have always done – be dynamic, resourceful and brave as we take on the challenges that our profession throws at us. One of the many new challenges is: How do I

reach my students at home when I am also teaching students in the classroom?

The reality (and in my opinion, tragedy) of South African schooling has been highlighted by this pandemic: Different schools and their students can have vastly different levels of access to the resources that they need for learning. In our school, we have found that the resource in highest demand is data. Most of our students have access to a device in their home, but many struggle with access to the internet.

In chatting with my teacher friends and other teachers in the edtech community, I have come across a number of different ways to address the issue of teaching those at home while others are at school, and I would like to present some of them to you in order of data required:

Printed work packs collected from school

 Fairly easy to access  No data usage  No need for a device  Time-consuming and potentially costly for parents to access (transport)  Printing and time cost at school  Added exposure risk

This is the simplest of the solutions and doesn’t require data connectivity. The teacher can prepare a work pack for a week ahead of time and somebody can then collect it from the school on behalf of the student. Something to keep in mind when putting the packs together is that according to the Cleveland Clinic, Covid-19 typically survives on paper for up to 24 hours.

Minimal internet connectivity

Park and sync

 Free data for parents and students  Access to digital resources  Time-consuming and potentially costly for parents to access (transport)  Can clog the school’s network  There is a delay between teachers posting work, students doing the work and students receiving feedback on the work

Some schools who have their own internet connection are opting for a “park and sync” model. This allows parents of learners in the school to park their cars in the school’s parking lot or travel to the school and sit in the parking lot while observing social distancing, in order to access the school’s WiFi. In this way, teachers can upload assignments to the learning management system (for example, Snapplify Engage or Google Classroom) and the student’s device can be synced in the parking lot. The student works offline at home and then syncs again the following week. The Snapplify Reader enables students to access their ebooks and resources offline, while Google products can also be used offline.

WhatsApp

 Low data usage  Accessible for most students  Data costs for parents  Parents and students have access to the teacher’s cellphone number  Feedback from the teacher is limited

Some schools have gone the route of using WhatsApp to communicate with parents and students. One of the drawbacks of this tool is that the parents and students will automatically have access to the teachers’ phone numbers. If the teachers are comfortable with this, or the school is able to purchase additional SIM cards for teachers, this can be a very effective method.

Some tips to consider:

• You can set up a group for your class or grade. • You may want to use an admin-only group or make use of broadcast messages. There is a setting in WhatsApp groups that only allows admins to post messages. Alternatively, broadcasting a message will allow you to send the same message to several contacts at once (this appears as an individual message from you – not in a group). Both of these options mean that parents will need to contact the teacher directly if necessary and will avoid a group becoming out of control. • To avoid high data costs, try not to send high-res images or videos. • Not all devices can read PDFs, so JPEG files are your safest bet, apart from plain text messages (which use the least amount of data). • Things like Google Slides can be saved as images to send out. You can also take screenshots on your phone. • You can run an image through a compressor to make the file size even smaller. I like wecompress.com for this purpose.

Moderate internet connectivity

Bolster WhatsApp groups

For learners in your class who have better, but still low internet connectivity, you could bolster the WhatsApp support by adding short explanation videos or voice notes. You can also make use of video or voice call.

Uploading a video to YouTube and sending your students a link will use less of their data than sending the video via WhatsApp.

Assign work through a Learning Management System (LMS) like Snapplify or Google Classroom

 A wide variety of learning experiences  Students get direct access to feedback from the teacher  Requires a fair amount of data  There might be a steep learning curve if it hasn’t been used before

E-learning solutions like Snapplify and Google Classroom allow you to assign a variety of learning opportunities to students. You can add more videos, weblinks, presentations, docs, quizzes and more. The same work can be assigned on these platforms as is done in the classroom with students. Some schools have decided to go digital-only, meaning that there are no books. Students bring a device to school which they use for their lessons and they take the device home with them in the afternoon. All feedback is digital. In this case, learners who are at home are able to access all of the materials via the e-learning platform.

Unlimited internet connectivity

Broadcast your lesson live

 Students can see their teacher and classmates  Students get direct access to feedback from the teacher  Students can communicate easily  Requires a lot of data and is reliant on a stable internet connection  There might be a steep learning curve if it hasn’t been used before

There are a number of ways that this could work, but basically the teacher would broadcast a live lesson via video conferencing software such as Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams. This could be from the teacher’s house or classroom, with students in the classroom or out.

If done from the classroom, the teacher would need to set up a device that has access to the video conferencing tool (such as a tablet, cellphone or laptop) in such a way that it videos the lesson while the teacher presents it live. Students who are at home would log in and be able to watch and participate in the lesson. Students then complete the assigned tasks; for example, in Google Classroom.

Having a webcam and microphone would help to make this smoother, but it isn’t necessary.

In this post-lockdown reality, I am sure that we teachers will continue to innovate and make the most of the resources that we have at our disposal.

Author: Jenna Swano Once an English FAL teacher at a Cape Town high school, Jenna Swano now has the joy of being a Grade 5 class teacher. Jenna runs the blog Thinking CAPS, which highlights her lessons learnt in the classroom.