Remote Learning/Teaching

As educators, we have been through a lot since March 2020. From the very beginning, we took on large challenges to the best of our ability, and very last minute. From administrators to teachers, everyone gave their all to provide an education for their students, during a pandemic. Thankfully, my district went one-to-one a couple months before we were forced to close, which was unbelievably good timing. Additionally, we were conditioned to slowly start adopting Google Apps for Education, and flew with that once we were all working/learning from home.

My past work experiences allowed me to be a Google Certified Educator, which was truly invaluable during this entire process. As the media specialist, I immediately set up a Google Classroom for my staff members to receive information and tips/tricks in a centralized manner. I found myself, without being in my physical space of the media center, becoming tech support in a lot of ways. Being there to help out staff and students who were dealing with a variety of ‘hiccups’ felt good. These have been such stressful times for everyone, so any assistance I can provide was great.

If you haven’t adopted the Google tools as an educator during distance teaching, I truly recommend it. Also, Screencastify has been a lifesaver for me! Creating short video tutorials to walk my colleagues through using online tools and/or websites was phenomenal. I even began an unofficial YouTube channel to house all of these tutorials.

The thing I have learned the most this past year is creativity. I have been working through avenues I have never explored before, because I have never had to! I know I am not the only one to have done this in the past nine months. I guess the old adage is true, “necessity is the mother of all invention.” I have needed to do many things to provide for my school community, and I have certainly invented new ways to go about doing so!

I know most, if not all, of us are impatiently waiting to go back to ‘normal teaching,’ but I do believe we have learned many new skills that we will carry with us when we finally do return.