Do you remember when you taught your first online class? Was it during confinement? In reality, it hasn't rained that much, but it seems to us that so many things have happened, that we have learned so much... One of those things that we have learned, without a doubt, is how to teach online. The reality we live in forced us to change the classrooms for our homes with everything that entails: nerves, fears, distractions, awareness of the lack of technical resources... But we have also verified our ability to improve, learn, and adapt to new situations. In addition, we have dusted off our initiative and creativity. Whether you have already become an expert online teacher, your pulse is still trembling, or you have not even tried the experience of teleteaching yet, this article is for you. Here you will find the best tips for tutors manchester, recommendations from tele-teaching experts, and the basic tools you need to be a TOP online teacher. If there is one certain thing, it is that virtual classes are here to stay, to a greater or lesser extent, but the trend is clear and it is not in our best interest to forget what we have already learned.
10 tips for TOP teleteaching
1. Choose your best tool for teleteaching
The first thing will be to specify the tool that you will use to teach your online classes. Depending on whether you work in public or private education and the criteria of your educational center, you may have more or less flexibility in the decision. ClassDojo, Google Classroom, and Edmodo are the applications preferred by teachers for teleteaching. They allow you to organize the classroom or manage the so-called classroom, and keep better control of tasks, attendance, and evaluations. Furthermore, they are in a continuous process of improvement. In the series of webinars that we organized in Algar we saw these three tools in depth, although, if you missed it, we have also talked about each of them in the article Free applications for the classroom (part II), which we undoubtedly recommend.
In the case of teaching classes to older students, you can also try Moodle, a high-quality platform that allows you to create online courses and other educational activities with a higher level of complexity, making it more useful and effective.
A good idea to not lose the thread of teleteaching is to use these tools as support, in a complementary way to our physical classes, as an additional instrument to communicate and work with students. This has two important advantages: it will allow you to stay up to date with technology and you will keep your students motivated since they love using new technologies (also in class).
2. Do tests before “going on stage”
It's no secret that live music and computers can play tricks on us, especially since we are not experts. If we add nerves and little experience to this, it will be normal if we do not achieve perfection. Don't put pressure on yourself, lower your expectations about teaching an online class! :) For this reason, in this decalogue of good practices for teleteaching we recommend that you do tests before jumping into the pool with your students. You can organize a “dress rehearsal” with several classmates from the same educational center, with teachers from other centers, or take the test with family and friends.
3. Don't limit yourself to the word, prioritize the image
If in face-to-face teaching we try to break with the teaching monologue, here too, and even to a greater extent. We cannot limit ourselves to talking and talking, let us remember that in teleteaching the distraction factors increase and our ability to control decreases. It's important to add visual elements to your class, such as creating a background, varying the images that appear on the screen at any time, screen sharing to show interactive presentations, or performing searches and live exercises. You can give the spotlight to your students by practicing reading aloud or other activities. As Torrey Trust, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, reminds us, there are multiple means of representation and we can use them all to break the monotony: images, infographics, photographs, even memes, audio elements such as podcasts, recordings, animated videos, documentaries, interactive multimedia elements, etc. You can consult the Trust Google Slide here. It is in English but it is worth it, as it includes innovative ideas, links to visual technology platforms, and other online teaching tips that you may find useful.
4. And speaking of interactive elements...
You need to communicate differently than you do in a face-to-face class, which is why it is key to adapt the educational materials and resources to the teleteaching we have available. Have you already used applications like Genially or Canva? We hope the answer is “Yes!” very big, but if not, don't worry, it's never too late to learn, right? Genially or Canva are web applications to create educational content, don't be scared because they are very simple and intuitive. It is also important that you know some educational gamification tools to create other types of motivating resources for your students, such as Kahoot, Wordwall, and Quizizz.
5. Adapt to the technical possibilities of your students
You are prepared, you have done tests with your colleagues at the center, your connection is going like a shot and you have created interactive content so that your class is really attractive and your students do not get lost at the first opportunity. Hmmm, are we forgetting something? Your audience! As teachers, we cannot ignore the particularities of each student, both in terms of abilities and their family environment and the economic possibilities and access to how to become a tutor as a student. As we have already commented in other articles, it is essential to prevent any boy or girl from being excluded or unable to keep up with the class in virtual mode.
6. Prioritize simplicity in online teaching
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away" (Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer and poet).
Sometimes, in the effort to seek perfection and a job well done, we create complex projects that hinder the most important objective: facilitating learning. It is not about always looking for the easy way, conformism, or little effort, but many times, the simplest indeed is the most effective. For example, our students have to know what is expected of them in each exercise, and subject and distance teaching must tend to be simplified (much more than face-to-face) to facilitate learning and make it enjoyable. Furthermore, by simplifying it for students we will also facilitate our work, especially the evaluation process.
7. The online evaluation
In teleteaching, we also continue to evaluate our students. Not only are we “continuing,” but we have in our hands the opportunity to turn the traditional tedious process into a quick and efficient evaluation. Really? Clear! Or did you think that technology had not reached this point? :) Checking that students have correctly assimilated the knowledge and concepts that interest you most will be much easier with evaluation apps such as Cerebriti, Socrative, or Google Forms. And don't forget that the rest of the gamification tools such as Kahoot also allow you to evaluate the proposed activities, and check the level of reading comprehension of a reading or a history lesson.
8. Creativity to power
"Creativity is thinking more efficiently." This phrase from the French poet Pierre Reverdy tells us that being creative is not the only way to think, but it is the most intelligent way. This is very useful advice for practically everything, including teleteaching. As we have already said in previous points, we have to communicate with our students differently, create educational resources that capture their attention and motivate them to follow online classes and adapt to the possibilities of all our students without detracting from the quality of teaching... Ultimately, be creative.
9. The importance of organizing
The organization always helps us and, when we are teaching an online class, even more so. Time seems to fly much faster, not to mention the unforeseen technical events that may arise. On the other hand, if you have attended webinars you will have seen that if the teacher is not very strict in the order of the explanation, our mind gets distracted and ends up losing the thread of the lesson. A tip that may be useful to you is to have a sheet with you with the order of points to be discussed and cross them out as you explain them. It will also help you recap, return to the explanation if you have jumped to another topic, etc.
10. Be practical!
Just because our classes are live does not mean that we cannot use recordings with explanations and resolution of frequently asked questions. We're not talking about becoming a YouTuber overnight, but you can record videos explaining a specific aspect, solving a question that is frequently repeated, and even showing the steps of a process through a screen recording. You will do it only once and you can reuse the resource countless times.
