Home schooling?
At the beginning I and many others said that I was home schooling. We had our own kids at home and we were their teachers. The semantics are important here. We were teaching our kids at home but we weren't home schooling. Home schooling requires a conscious decision to remove kids from mainstream education and educate them at home. We were teaching in response to a pandemic, our own children at home, they returned to their classes. We weren't home schooling. They are now back at home and we are still not home schooling, we are response teaching them in an effort to sustain their thirst for knowledge. There is little to be lost here in terms of learning.
Lost learning?
Lost learning, let's think about that. To lose something is to misplace it or to have something removed that cannot be recovered. We haven't mis placed our children's education. We have had the opportunity to attend school removed but this can and will be recovered as soon as, well as soon as, well, you know what as soon as whatever it needs to be for everyone to be safe.
In seeing all these unhelpful reports about lost learning we are defining the future narrative and eventually consensus may define that we accept lost learning as a thing. But how can this be? What are we losing? We are missing opportunities to connect. We are missing friendships and relationships. We are learning perhaps at a different pace to what we would have seen in school. But we lose nothing. We didn't pop our children's education in the drawer for safe keeping and now can't find it, did we?
Hybrid teaching?
Surely this is doing some classes online and some in school? Well no, hybrid teaching is that most challenging (personally an experience I would never choose to do) that mix of physically having some learners in class and some at home joining the class simultaneously via an online meeting into the physical classroom. The cognitive overload as I wrote that was great, imagine having to teach like that? Making sure all of them are engaged, checking progress all via online means and physical means. Sure I can see when this could happen as an exception when students are isolating but I can't picture this being sustainable long term, if you've had success at this please do reach out, there is research being done on this that you could help with.
Synchronous teaching?
Teaching all the students at the same time. What we used to do in a physical classroom. We were all there at the same time, engaging in learning. Yet, a question for you. When we were in a physical classroom, did we pop a slide deck up, chuck some worksheets out and sit back down? Same rules apply when teaching synchronously online. Yes you can teach synchronously online, I have done it many times, check out my blog on What The Trig on it. I (honestly) serialise and critique how teaching online went. Synchronous is all together at the same time. Not necessarily on a video call at the same time. Doing synchronous teaching online may require a mind shift, a little tweak.
Its a question of value. What I call my sprinkles. Where can I sprinkle my magic today? Where can I add the most value to my learners today? Is it sitting here online watching them watch me watch them while I talk over my slide deck? Or is it designing an activity to apply their knowledge, gained from watching my slide deck on their own, to a new and exciting concept? I was taught in my first ever part time Saturday job aged 14 that, if you're sat down you've missed something, we're always busy! Same when I became a teacher, if you've time to sit down in class, my mentor told me, you're missing an opportunity for learning for someone. Same with synchronous online delivery, are we busy checking misconceptions, challenging assumptions with students. Content delivery can be done via a variety of modes when online, what value can you add to that content?
Asynchronous learning?
Which leads is nicely onto asynchronous learning. If your value is going to be checking assumptions and driving the learning forward, could the learners cover your content asynchronously before joining your synchronous lesson? Beware not to set too much asynchronous material with other teachers too as then the burden can be overwhelming for students, spread the load. Imagine all 9 subjects set asynchronous work all at once that is a lot of work for students to do independently in the week. If my class are coming to see me on Thursday online, I might sent them my content the Friday before and ask them to have watched or reviewed it before class, we can then crack on in class, synchronously. Oh wait now I've a hybrid of asynchronous and synchronous going on surely???? Sorry to muddy the waters again!
Asynchronous is learners learning at their own pace, their own way, their own style. You set an end goal and leave them choices to travel along paths to get there and you dip in with feedback at key points. Thinking about the value you give, is 60min of you watching learners watching content good value? What if we split that 60min into 6 lots of 10min sessions where we could have one to one's? We could schedule some more in around the rest of the class the rest of the week too. The learners could asynchronously learn content and make choices and complete tasks, we could speak to them about how it's going, extend their knowledge. Or those 60min might be spent giving verbal feedback on tasks completed? Or video feedback? Recognising the time commitment of the teacher here, managers and Hods may ask how much planning time to give for teaching online? A lot more than you were planning on giving teachers!
Flipping learning?
These approaches then are flipping our original classrooms so we are flipping learning. Yet flipped learning is when learners learn content ahead of class and arrive at a Synchronous class with the skills for the lesson. That very approach of learners learning content asynchronously and then arriving at a synchronous class is a flipped approach. Flipped learning though, doesn't have to be online. It's a beautiful thing when face to face too, it's synergy is not with learning online but the experience of the learner in gaining prior knowledge before class. The learner arrives ready to learn with a desire to delve deeper into the subject or topic.
Blended learning?
So it must be a blend then? Blending classroom practise with teaching online? Well blended learning is a mix of teaching online and face to face.
But wait isn't that hybrid learning?
Blended learning is for an individual, the individual learns material both online and face to face. In hybrid the individual student would be one or the other, in class or not. The class are a hybrid, not the individual. Blended learning is probably the closest to what happened before lockdown 3.0 and probably what we will return to? Some groups are in, some groups are at home due to social distancing and classroom size restrictions. So the teacher plans some online work and then some face to face work and rotates round the groups. But yes you heard, double planning. This can be a blend of synchronous for those physically in class and asynchronous for those working online.
A huge point to remember to all of these approaches is what does it look like for the learner? If they've asynchronous classes all week they will need to be highly organised to spread tasks out. Have we taught them how to apply their study skills? Have we taught them time management? Have we taught them the importance of screen time breaks? If learners have a week of synchronous online lessons this will be an important skill to teach. What about flipped learning, if we all follow that approach as teachers of the same learner when will they have time to learn our material? We need to collaborate with other teachers to ensure we aren't going to burn students out.
Blended then itself branches into many forms, project based, station rotation, self discovery etc. The semantics are becoming more and more important the more refined we go into this journey. There are other approaches that you may be doing that I haven't covered here, did we ever categorise our in class teaching to this level before? The semantics will become the defining points of how this plays out. Success and failure will be recorded against each term used.
