Recent times have forced the landscape of our classrooms to evolve. The question I often ask myself is, "Will we ever go back?" I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that it is imperative that we adjust highly effective instructional strategies to engage students in hybrid environments to prepare for whatever the future holds for education.

When I started to think about instructional strategies that could be most easily modified for this type of environment, Socratic Seminar was the first one that came to mind. Socratic Seminar provides a structure for students to discuss a question posed by a classmate or teacher (usually dependent on a text). Often during Socratic Seminar there are two groups: an inner circle and an outer circle. Both inner and outer circles have roles during the Socratic Seminar (also know as a fishbowl). 

In a hybrid environment, the inner circle could be the face-to-face students while the outer circle could be the remote students. Traditionally, the job of the outer circle is to be the observers and summarizers of the discussion of the inner circle. However, engagement in this role might be challenging for remote students. In addition to being an observer and summarizer, a suggestion would be that the outer circle continues to pose deeper questions throughout the discussion and shares their own thoughts through a backchannel chat, using a tool such as YoTeach or the Q and A feature of Google Slides.

Don’t be afraid to switch these roles! If your remote learners are lacking engagement, allow them to be the inner circle and project the video-call for the face-to-face students to observe in class. Face-to-face students can also pose questions for deeper conversations through the tools listed above.

A few things to take into consideration would be: 

• Have the face-to-face inner circle seated in a horseshoe, as opposed to a circle, so that students viewing from home are able to see and hear the face-to-face students.
• Questions being posed in class should be re-voiced loudly and clearly, while also being recorded in the chat feature of a video call, on Google Slides, or a table in a Google Doc (see examples). Both circles should have equal access to the classroom discussion. 
• Also, to keep remote students engaged, assigning a face-to-face student (or even the teacher) with the task of interacting with the outer circle and sharing to the inner circle will help all students feel heard. 
• Projecting the outer circle backchannel discussion to a classroom screen will support the interaction of the two circles, as well.
• ​Take the experience to the next level with an OWL or a SWIVL. These devices can help facilitate a better viewing experience.

What instructional strategies have you modified to suit hybrid environments? We'd love to hear about it in the comments!

~Mindy

Additional Resources:
Socratic Seminars: Let's Build a Culture of Student-Led Discussion
Fishbowl Instructional Strategy
5 Steps to a Successful Socratic Seminar

In a world that is still not done with virtual learning or quarantined classrooms, the ability to teach online is still and important skill for teachers to hone. Zoom and Google Meet are becoming an integral part to facilitating that learning, so in this post I am going to take a look at how you can use these tools to share  a document camera, a USB webcam, your smartphone, or even an iPad on your next virtual meeting. 

Document cameras are perfect for showing documents, but they can also be used to share learning materials, manipulatives, a dry erase whiteboard or just about anything else you can fit under that camera. If a document camera is not flexible enough for what you want to show, or you don't have access to one in your classroom, you can always plug in a USB webcam and use that instead. They six-foot USB cable will give you some additional options for displaying content that may not fit under a document camera, and many can be mounted on a camera tripod for additional support. Take a look at the video below to see how to use a document camera in Zoom.

If you are not using Zoom, fear not, because there are options for Google Meet too. Unfortunately, Google does not have built-in support for document cameras, but the ability to change your video input or share you screen to show the camera software is still an option. The video below shows you how that is done.

Great teachers make the most of what they already have access to. Document cameras are in short supply right now, and so are webcams, so if you have iPads in your classroom, then you can absolutely use those instead. If you have an iPhone, you can use that too. All you need to do is follow the directions in the video below.

In Google Meet, you can use an iPhone, iPad or even an Android phone as your document camera. All you need to do is join your call twice, once on your laptop and once on your mobile device. When you want to use your device as a document camera, simply share your screen and open the camera app. Details on how to do that are in the video below!

If you are having problems with any of the methods described in the videos above, feel free to let me know and I will do what I can to help fix your issues.

​
Jonathan Wylie
Digital Learning Consultant
jwylie@gwaea.org 

​In the spring of 2020, the Digital Learning team worked diligently to provide resources to support the unprecedented changes to the world of education through the Continuous Learning Field Guide. At the time of creation, students and teachers everywhere were in a 100% remote learning environment.

As this situation has continued to evolve, the Continuous Learning Field Guide (CLFG) has also received some minor tweaks we would like to point out. 

First and foremost, we have added our team's definition of hybrid and tips to help teachers in a hybrid learning environment. An example of these additional tips can be seen below. 

In addition to these hybrid tips, our team has revisited each domain of the CLFG and provided clarifying language to address different learning environments our schools are experiencing. To be clear, we feel that the CLFG will continue to be a living evolution of instructional practices that will be beneficial to students and teachers in all learning environments of the future. The instructional strategies and digital tools that have been shared are not unique to the current learning environments we find ourselves in, but have been highlighted as advantageous for the ongoing situation. 

We invite you to revisit the Continuous Learning Field Guide to learn more about these additional tips for hybrid learning. 

~The DLGWAEA Team

Good questions are at the heart of good instruction. They are also at the heart of creativity. This month we would like to encourage you to create questions that will get your students thinking and creating! Go a step further and write questions that you might use while students are creating so you are prepared to ask thought-provoking questions!

GWAEA has an amazing Critical Thinking Flipbook that provides a huge bank of questioning stems. We particularly love the Creative page! You can find this printable flipbook here.

Benton Community students wrote their own questions to ask one another while making! We love the responsibility and community this can help build! Learn more about their Maker Mentor Program here.

We'd love to see the questions and prompts you share with your students! Please share them with us @DLGWAEA on social media or email us at makerspace@gwaea.org

And as always...

#HaveFunMaking
~Mindy and Amber