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I agree that what we need now more than ever is collaborative, community building exercises. Last semester when we went online, at least we knew our students and they knew us. In the fall, if we go online, there will be students that we haven't met and built a rapport with in person. It will be more important than ever to foster an interactive environment and focus on meaning and communication.

Gives voice to concerns I've had as I contemplate using Zoom in my classes.

Thanks for sharing this, Greg! I've noticed that trying to share 20+ video feeds doesn't seem to lead to anything productive, and has a tendency to cause connectivity issues on my end. For my upcoming virtual class meetings, I I'll ask students to check in on video/audio when they join, and then mute themselves for the first bit of class. I'll then shift them into small breakout groups as soon as practical, where they can complete activities with cameras and mics on.

I definitely understand zoom fatigue from experience. This gives me some thoughts to contemplate to approach this differently. I am considering an exit question each student must answer...

Great ideas for using recorded videos in the classroom, for students and teachers

Blog post with VoiceThread activity ideas for world language class

I like how useful this tool is for engaging students, pushes them to develop skills faster, for assessments and to avoid the "drill and kill" process that is demotivating.

ACTFL 2012 presentation "Attendees will learn to revise traditional activities by incorporating advertising and smartphones into their teaching. Advertising is everywhere and smartphones are part of most students' life. They can be tools that shape student awareness of other languages and cultures. "

"Abstract Despite its obvious importance, it appears that in many foreign language programs, oral practice is not given as much time and attention as it deserves. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that foreign language professionals recognize the need for more oral practice, but do not have at their disposal a convenient means to provide it. An online oral practice/assessment platform, Speak Everywhere, has been developed to fill this void. It allows instructors without special computer knowledge to quickly create video-based speaking exercises and quizzes for their students to work on outside the classroom. The instructor can access the oral productions that the students submit to the system, and grade them or give individual feedback on them either in text or audio or both. Using its flexible and easy-to-use authoring sub-system, it is possible to create exercises of various formats (e.g. Q&A, repeat after the model, structure drills, role-play, and oral reading)."

Some good advice for online and hybrid course engagement. One of the comments below says - even for F2F classes! One of the comments also questions the point about responding to all student posts - saying that it's better to let them discuss without you, only adding in occasionally or with a summary or notes in a weekly wrap-up. This "hands-off" discussion method is the route Alyssa and I have taken, what has worked for you?

This is higher education levels, not K-12. They interviewed chief academic officers for this info. The report shows more students taking online courses, a higher percentage of courses being online, faculty acceptance of online courses, what training faculty receive, and compares student outcomes to face-to-face.

This is a quick tutorial for embedding audio into QR codes. it provides a couple examples of how this might be used in an educational setting.

Adrianne, I like your link a lot. QR is a great helper. I have used it last year and make easy to my students to get faster to pages I wanted them to go.

Formally assess the extent and scope of the problem within your school district by collecting survey and/or interview data from your students. Once you have a baseline measure of what is going on in your school, specific strategies can be implemented to educate students and staff about online safety and Internet use in creative and powerful ways.

Sorry, you may have to go to your own library access to see this, but it was interesting for a number of things: 80% took all classes online, 74% indicated interaction with peers was not or only a little important, among other questions in a survey given to middle and high school students.

Fascinating interview of Michael Horn (co-founder of a non-profit innovation think tank) and Vibhu Mittal (CEO of Edmodo) on the impact of social learning networks such as Edmodo on the classroom. Some topics covered: blended learning, privacy and student data, collaboration between teachers and between students, personalized learning.