Planning for Back to School August 2020

Me in my laundry room/office

This year has been so different from any other years. SO much uncertainty. 

I wanted to be super prepared so I read many, many books and articles and Twitter lists over the summer. I participated in webinars and Zoom meetings and tried to put what I found in one place but my brain doesn't really work that way, so I have some stuff in Google Keep, some stuff in Wakelet, some stuff written down.

In the end I still felt unprepared for the first day of school. I have had so much anxiety in the last few days.

I did set up assignments for my students before the first day of school. I used Howie Hua's Math Autobiography slides, and some of my students started working on them immediately. It's already creating amazing discussions and bonding between my students.

The first day of school went well for me. I didn't plan much, I just shared a couple of slides about myself and then had my students do a community circle. It worked out well because it let them practice muting and unmuting themselves, listening to others, and speaking during a Google Meet for potentially the first time. I did have some students who played weird noises when others were speaking, but since it shows who's making noises I was able to discuss that with them. 

I was able to call on students by name without them having to tell me their names, which is nice, but I need to figure out a less awkward way for them to tell me their names. Maybe next time I will have them introduce themselves to me as they join the call. I ended up this time having the students record their names on a Nearpod slide, since my district purchased Nearpod for us.

The second day didn't go quite as well, because I had students do Nearpod AND sign into a new website (Khan Academy for Math, Code for Computer Science). I linked to my website with instructions on how to sign in to both, but I think it was a little overwhelming. Unfortunately with Nearpod if you want to make changes, it completely erases the codes you already set up (and I'd spent ~1 hour setting up codes & scheduling to Google Classroom already) so I just kept it for the day. I need to figure out if there's a faster way for that to happen because I'm used to being able to change as I go with minimal problems.

One thing I love is making video tutorials, and I've learned to make easy captions with Google Docs Voice to Text on my phone while I record on my laptop. I even forgot for one and went back and replayed in the video with Google Docs opened on my phone and got the captions that way.

Overall it's been a good first "week" of school. I am glad I've been using so many tech tools over the years so I don't feel like I'm floundering as much right now.