Hey Schoolbox Community,
Here at Schoolbox, we understand that you may be considering closing your school due to the concerns relating to COVID-19 (Coronavirus), so we wanted to highlight a couple of things that will support you.
We want to make this as easy as we can for teachers and students, so we thought we would provide you with a quick overview of the capabilities of Schoolbox that can support you in continuing to deliver quality education from a distance.
The first thing we have received several requests for, relate to an integration of web conferencing software. Our Education Consultant Jez tested out Zoom and has prepared a guide on Schoolbox Help. We have also done some work with CirQlive to test their LTI integration, if you wanted to check that out as an alternative.
From a teacher perspective, there are several things that you most likely are already using, but we shall break them down into types of components or actions, to ensure you have it all under control.
‘Information’ components
Lots of you will already be using News and Calendar components, which is brilliant. These components are very versatile and will support you even more during this time. Use News to send a reminder about what time your ‘online’ class is during the day, and a quick update of what you want the students to have completed prior to the class.
Use the calendar to highlight the times that the online class is taking place. It might be worth asking your Schoolbox Team to add a new event type for ‘Online Classes’ so that your students can quickly distinguish when they need to be online. This is particularly important as you may not be running your classes at ‘normal’ times, or for the full timetabled period.
‘Collaborative’ components
Maintaining a relationship with your students is going to be key to the success of your online learning environment. You may be ‘online’ for the time that your class is timetabled, however, it is unlikely that you are going to be standing in front of the computer for that whole time, ‘teaching’. This is where your collaborative components will come in handy.
Use a Social Stream for your students to let you know where they are up to, or a Blog to give students the opportunity to respond to a video you posted or a task you prepared for them.
You may also wish to add components such as forums or polls, to keep your online classroom interactive and your students engaged!
‘Learning’ components
You will likely already be heavily invested in your learning components. But if you are not, now may well be the time to take the leap. If you have Courses and Units set up, then you will absolutely be engaging with your Course Outline component that has been imported onto your class page with activities and assessments on a regular basis. We recommend that you create, within the course outline of the class page, your additional distance learning tasks, quizzes and due work that would have otherwise been set in person in the physical classroom.
It will be particularly helpful for you at the moment to create some short quizzes, that can be marked for you, and students can have instant feedback on their learning. Also make good use of tasks - this will keep the students accountable for what they are needing to get done during or between classes.
If you are not ready for Courses and Units, head to the ‘Learning tab’ of the components and add ‘Due Work’, ‘Tasks’ and ‘Quizzes’ components. Take some time to get to know how they work and be sure to check out the handy guides we have on Schoolbox Help!
An essential part of this whole process will be ensuring that your feedback is timely and precise. Use the learning tools available and make use of rubrics and the inline grader. A well built rubric will show your students what they have achieved, and offer them the next steps in their learning, by viewing the next descriptor. By adding feedback to the task, you will further support your students and their ability to move forwards.
The inline grader can support your students with your annotations on any submissions they create. You can markup the submissions using text, highlighting, underlining and many other useful features. Alongside this, you can record yourself in audio or video form.
Without you there, your students will need to make sense of the feedback, so they can move forward with the next task you have set for them.
‘Multimedia’ components
There are some amazing components that will support you and your students in your online classroom. If you have a ‘ClickView’ account for your school, you will already know the wonder of resources created by others. If you are yet to use the Embed Learning Tool component, we would highly recommend you do so. Already in the component are some pre-selected third party learning tools. Use these to support your students learning when you are not there to answer questions immediately.
‘Resources’ components
Make sure you are making the most of your Resource component. Add files and links to support your students in quick access to whatever they need to continue their learning journey. This is an ideal time to ensure your pages are organised, as without you there, your students will need to use their common sense to find what they are looking for. Why not make it easy on them?
Although this may be a challenging time for you, with some potential hesitation around the use of Schoolbox to deliver online learning, it is now a necessary time for you to deliver concise, authentic content. Your physical presence to support your students may have gone, but your online presence still exists and so does your knowledge and understanding of the subject. So this change may require some learning for you too. But, don’t be scared! Find your confident colleagues and support each other in how you can deliver the best learning experience possible from outside the classroom. We guarantee you will become a more skilled teacher through this experience.