Distance learning and remote teaching are hard. The hardest part for me is the parent communication, as well as communication with students. It is really tough to keep up with each individual kid at a distance. There are assignments that slip through the cracks. Kids miss due dates. Or worse, not hearing from a kid for a few days.
Calling from my personal cell phone isn’t really something that I want to do. I don’t give out my number very easily. In fact, every time I’m asked to give a phone number for online shopping or store memberships, I give an old, out of service number.
I don’t know anybody who is picking up restricted calls in 2020, so star 67 is out of the question.
I have an awesome alternative to student and parent communication during remote learning.
First of all is Loom, an amazing video app that I use daily to communicate with my students. I use it to record my YouTube lessons. I also use it to record my “daily updates” that I post on the Stream page of Google Classroom. My favorite way to use Loom is with the email function. If you installed the Chrome Extension for Loom, you can record a video directly into an email.
As my school was coming to the end of the third quarter and at the midpoint of the fourth quarter, I recorded a video for each of my students and sent it to their student gmail account. I titled each video with the student initials so that I knew which video belonged to which kid. The coolest part about Loom, in my opinion, is that I can set it up so I get a notification if a video has been watched. Since I sent videos to individuals, if I get an email “Your video has been viewed: KR” then I’d know that Kelsey Reavy got the message I sent. You could also use this for parent communication. It could be more like parent-teacher conference, where you give the parents an update on their kid.
I started off each video by greeting the students individually, so they’d know that it wasn’t a mass email sent out to kids in the same group. Then I made sure to ask them how they were doing, and I encouraged them to reply to the email with any questions they had. Then I let them know about their quarter 3 grades. I gave them their current position for quarter four (most of my kids are rocking the house and I’m so proud of them, it brings me to tears). And finally I let them know that I love them and miss them.
Remote Learning Student Engagement
This has been OUTSTANDING for my student engagement during distance learning. Having a teacher reach out to a kid, personally, ask them how they are doing, and letting them know they are loved and missed is something I don’t think a lot of high schoolers are getting right now. To be fair, most high school teachers have 80+ students, and it’s so hard to individually communicate with each one. Trust me, I get it.
If you are going to take the time, this is SUCH a great option. Not only do you get the “watched receipt” but it will give your students such a boost in morale that the results will make it worth it. I highly suggest it! If you find it difficult to find the time, you could make just five or six different videos and email them. You can send a few different types: on track, doing great, falling behind, I haven’t heard from you etc.
Loom offers their Basic program for free (for now) – it has a few restrictions. Depending on the number of videos you need to make, you can totally get away with this. Loom also offers their Pro Plan free to teachers, you just need to use your school email address to sign up. They verify the email account and boom – you’re ready to go. The only way to get the watch receipt is with the Loom Pro account, so going through your school email account is certainly worth it.
Interested in reading some more Distance Learning Tips? Check out this post about how I use Google Forms.
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