I have been an educator for almost 10 years now. I like to think that I am OK at my job. I know what a good lesson looks like, I know how to check for progress, I can give feedback and next steps etc. Yet home schooling in lockdown has caused me challenges that I wasn't expecting. I expected some challenges in terms of managing content, it's not my age range specialty, obviously the relationship with my kids and them wanting to engage would be my main challenge. The last day at school I was given a huge pack of fun educational things to do at home. This wasn't useful. I knew how to make play doh in the microwave already. Now this wasn't school's fault, they didn't know what to do either, it was all very quick and sudden.
So I dutifully created a login for the age appropriate teacher resource site and began planning some lessons. Whoa did I struggle! There was so much content. Sentence prompts, they look easy enough, I will begin with those. Cue 1587 resources on sentence prompts. How do I know which is a good task? How do I know my kids will be able to do it? How do I change it from portrait to landscape in this website? This made me think, how are other parents, non educators managing? It was very overwhelming.
I think that there is a wider problem in that we haven't learnt the skill of curation yet or it certainly isn't embedded yet in our ways. We teach the 6C's in education settings but as adults, leaders, educators of a different generation of when the internet first arrived, we haven't been taught this skill. Part of my job is to help educators create LMS content, Google Classrooms for example. All too often I see reams and reams of information in a stream, no topics, no structure. The educator has posted articles that they like, assessment tasks, slides from class, wellbeing updates, contact details for pastoral care...all good stuff but how does a learner access it easily, how do they find what they need?
In a social media world we are used to pinging a link, sharing something funny, it's easy. But as educators and leaders we need to adapt to a different skill set when sharing with people. We need to be explicit about what we want them to access. Google Classroom (disclaimer I am a Google Certified Trainer) has some great tools for this. Material posts are when you want learners to read something. Assignments are when you want them to do something etc. However educators need to use the topics tools too. A good place to start is always, admin tasks, pastoral information, exam information and then subject specific tasks. Learners can then navigate easier by clicking into the topics they need and then searching in a smaller area for the information they are looking for.
Even with these tools staff still need to curate the content, it's not a case of sharing every article that you see. There's a saying, think before you click. We should extend this to think before you click the share button. Is it the best example of what you are trying to share? Does it add value to your discussion? Will the experience be enhanced by you sharing this content? Tools like Wakelet help with this. Wakelet lets you pop all your bits in to one place, all your websites, articles, infographics from the web and then you can trim your content down and curate it on Wakelet. Why not share your Wakelet board and your number 1 example? Let people view your collection of resources and ideas and then promote your best example. Surely that is a more positive experience than asking people to scroll through streams of posts?
So home schooling got off to a slow start, I struggled to plan and access the content, spoiler alert, there are further challenges ahead in my home schooling journey...SJ
