Teaching in two timezones
One of the problems of moving to China was leaving my senior physics and chemistry classes half way through their academic year. This, of course, caused me many a sleepless night on how I could supplement what their new teachers were doing in the classroom and help them pass their NCEA exams in November back in New Zealand when I was teaching in China with the 5 hour time difference.
However, as I had already been flipping my junior classes from the previous year, I stumbled on a solution. I already had the power point presentations for the year set up and they had internet access back home in NZ, so I decided to create office mixes of the lessons and post to Youtube which allowed them easiest access.
Essentially, office mix is an add on the Microsoft power point, where you can record yourself going through the slides and also record yourself actually demonstrating a few of the concepts, for example, electromagnetic induction with a magnet and a copper coil, so the students get more of a handle on it.
I am also lucky to be a Microsoft Surface Expert and the Surface allowed me to go through worked examples on the power point through writing them directly on to the presentation, which was very useful when dealing with complicated Physics and Chemistry calculations like circular motion below.
The videos were then uploaded onto Youtube so the students and parents could have easy access and be able to go through the presentations, worked examples and learning tasks at their own speed at home.
At the same time, I had created a Microsoft class notebook for each subject where I could upload supporting notes and further problems for the students to work through over the week on the topics in the videos. This also allowed me to provide feedback and gave the students the ability to ask questions around the video, notes or problems. At the end of the week, I'd skype each class for around an hour to discuss any problems they were having and briefly introduce what was the plan going forward.
The Microsoft class notebook is a digital portfolio where I could post information to individual students and each would develop their own unique pages depending on their developmental stage in the course.
A further advantage of the class notebook was I could further extend those who were aiming for excellence with additional problems and higher order feedback and also reinforce key concepts with those weaker students.
Finally, the use of Microsoft forms allowed me to set short tests for the classes to test misconceptions and test understanding and refine individual pages on the class notebook depending on the information.
Although I used the Microsoft suite, due to the ease of us in China, I am sure other platforms would have worked just as well.
What amazed me was the power of technology to reinforce the relationships I had built up over 3 years teaching these young men. That we as a class could still function of geographical distance. The heart of the approach was still me the teacher, differentiating the lessons for each student, but also the buy-in from the students and the willingness to learn and improve on that learning.
So what was the result? 95% pass rate for Chemistry and the highest number of excellences in Level 2 Physics. So not bad. I do not think it would have been successful if I had not developed and built on the relationships I had, however.
The importance of personalising the learning, the collaborative nature of the skype chats and the students knowing the person at the other end I think was critical to the success. So congratulations to my senior students of 2016, we got there!
Update 9/2/2017: Got back in touch with my students via a skype chat to discuss with them why they thought the process was so effective for them. They felt the flipped classroom model where they could watch the lessons at their own speed and also rewind to certain sections was invaluable.
However, as I had already been flipping my junior classes from the previous year, I stumbled on a solution. I already had the power point presentations for the year set up and they had internet access back home in NZ, so I decided to create office mixes of the lessons and post to Youtube which allowed them easiest access.
Essentially, office mix is an add on the Microsoft power point, where you can record yourself going through the slides and also record yourself actually demonstrating a few of the concepts, for example, electromagnetic induction with a magnet and a copper coil, so the students get more of a handle on it.
I am also lucky to be a Microsoft Surface Expert and the Surface allowed me to go through worked examples on the power point through writing them directly on to the presentation, which was very useful when dealing with complicated Physics and Chemistry calculations like circular motion below.
The videos were then uploaded onto Youtube so the students and parents could have easy access and be able to go through the presentations, worked examples and learning tasks at their own speed at home.
At the same time, I had created a Microsoft class notebook for each subject where I could upload supporting notes and further problems for the students to work through over the week on the topics in the videos. This also allowed me to provide feedback and gave the students the ability to ask questions around the video, notes or problems. At the end of the week, I'd skype each class for around an hour to discuss any problems they were having and briefly introduce what was the plan going forward.
The Microsoft class notebook is a digital portfolio where I could post information to individual students and each would develop their own unique pages depending on their developmental stage in the course.
A further advantage of the class notebook was I could further extend those who were aiming for excellence with additional problems and higher order feedback and also reinforce key concepts with those weaker students.
Finally, the use of Microsoft forms allowed me to set short tests for the classes to test misconceptions and test understanding and refine individual pages on the class notebook depending on the information.
Although I used the Microsoft suite, due to the ease of us in China, I am sure other platforms would have worked just as well.
What amazed me was the power of technology to reinforce the relationships I had built up over 3 years teaching these young men. That we as a class could still function of geographical distance. The heart of the approach was still me the teacher, differentiating the lessons for each student, but also the buy-in from the students and the willingness to learn and improve on that learning.
So what was the result? 95% pass rate for Chemistry and the highest number of excellences in Level 2 Physics. So not bad. I do not think it would have been successful if I had not developed and built on the relationships I had, however.
The importance of personalising the learning, the collaborative nature of the skype chats and the students knowing the person at the other end I think was critical to the success. So congratulations to my senior students of 2016, we got there!
Update 9/2/2017: Got back in touch with my students via a skype chat to discuss with them why they thought the process was so effective for them. They felt the flipped classroom model where they could watch the lessons at their own speed and also rewind to certain sections was invaluable.
"The videos were great, Sir. Really helped me go over stuff again and again to help me learn it"The students also felt that having someone at the other end who actually knew who they were was important as they felt they should try because of the amount of time and effort I was putting in for them.
"It was really helpful doing this for us Sir, helped the class join together and help each other out as you were try to help us do well"This last quote also illustrated that they began working collaboratively as classes to try and succeed as a group which was a pleasing unexpected consequence and leaders emerged from the classes.
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