Online Again! This one is for the teachers.

Online - Good, Bad or Just Different?

So since arriving in Malaysia we have been under a strict set of controls, not dissimilar to those imposed on the UK in the first and second full blown lockdowns.

This lockdown has some of the characteristics of the first UK lockdown - decent(ish) weather, the ability to walk and take exercise and just like the summer months of 2020 there are some signs of incremental opening of service industry sectors.

However, the schooling aspect still resembles lockdown 2 - no schools are open and all lessons are taking place online.

This is a representation of my classroom - I don't really know what it looks like as I've only set foot in it twice!

This is not how I wanted to start teaching at my new school. I know at least one friend who went through this in the UK and like me she was walking, not just into a teaching position, but into a leadership role. She was taking on far more responsibility though, and knowing her work ethic, organisational skills, relentless energy and positivity, she would have made a success of that situation.

I, however, am struggling. But then so are most of the staff I talk to.

In my previous school we never started online - we went online from a point midway through each year. In the case of the second lockdown we had already formed plans and put in place a curriculum that could be delivered fairly effectively online. We were also working with a team of people who were exceptionally talented.

Small aside:

I have been incredibly lucky that the two English departments I have had the privilege to work with have both been exceptional. I have also been frankly blessed to have worked with people, both within and beyond my immediate departments, who I can call friends. This is rare and not something I take for granted.

As a result, as unpleasant and draining as online teaching was, as demanding as the preparation was, as challenging it is to motivate students who are not actually in front of you, we managed. Not only did we manage, we ensured students didn't lose out and the curriculum was covered in its entirety.

So, given that I've had a model of successful online teaching and I've seen decent results, what is the problem?

Well the problem is twofold:

1) Good teaching is about establishing positive and authentic relationships.

Kids can't even put up their hands to ask questions online... okay - I put this image in just to break up the text and it was the only thing that I could find that was even half way relevant!

Now a well motivated, driven, disciplined and well supported student may well succeed in online world despite the fact that they do not receive direct and high quality teaching. However those students will always do better and have more positive experience if they do get this.

The online environment removes a key component of good teaching - the direct and human interaction. The curriculum design may be excellent, the quality of the instruction may be the very best, the resources plentiful and well designed, but none of this makes up for the interactions that go on in a classroom. This directness is a key quality of effective learning.

Here, a teacher can pick up on the subtle nuances of whether a student really understands what is being asked and can tailor the response accordingly. Here, the students can freely ask questions without the inhibitions of microphone dropouts and how they look on camera.

There were students I was able to engage and get work out of in person that wouldn't do anything online.

Yes, there are a handful of kids for whom the online environment proved to be the making of them. I discovered that there were students in year 7 who could concentrate and completed everything on time and in detail in a way that they never had in class. There were year 10s whose voices were heard above the chatter of the classroom for the very first time. However, for the most part, these rare incidents of the benefits of the online environment were outweighed by the negatives of on screen teaching.

2) Teaching and Learning in most contexts across the globe are based on in person principles and styles of instruction.

A chalk board - how quaint! This image is definitely of a real classroom...

The teaching profession is geared up for and trained to teach people who are present their in the same space as the teacher occupies (not literally - I do understand the basics of physics, thank you).

We are an adaptable bunch and given a couple of years and a decent budget we could retool the curriculum to fully integrate blended teaching and develop fully flipped curricula that could future proof against such eventualities. However, we have the problem that we are actually doing the job. No one is going to give every teacher everywhere the time to just take a year off and re-plan the way the whole of teaching works. That is what it would take to make this 'online' situation viable in the long term, but there isn't the redundancy built into the system to allow for that - any change will have to be slow, iterative and likely outdated by the time it's been completed. But that's education for you!

Even well designed virtual and hybrid learning can't replace the social aspect of learning. Kids don't come to school just to learn their subjects, they're learning to be people!

Hybrid learning is more successful than wholly online as at least there is the chance to establish the learning behaviours, establish routines, set out expectations etc, but maintaining these online even if you've had the kids in a class for a while? There is a definite sell-by date on that. This was something we discovered in lockdown part 2 (or 3 as it was for those of us in the North). Towards the end of the January - March lockdown in 2021 I could see the fatigue setting into the kids and I could definitely feel it in myself.

True hybrid learning is also extremely tricky to do - having some live and some remote teaching happening simultaneously is more difficult than either part of the combination on its own. Again, due to the nature of teaching - we have to do the job and design and plan the job at the same time - we don't have the time to reflect and refine the practice to get it as good as it could or should be.

Is it all bad?

There are positive that can come out of online learning and online working in general - both teachers and students have had to learn new IT skills, with, it has to be said, varying degrees of success. We adapt to new methods of communication that can allow us to stay connected (this has been a lifeline for me personally), we develop new ways to provide feedback that are actually better than the ones we were using already, we provide high quality study material that is freely available at all times to all students, we develop video resources and e-libraries; the list goes on! (Please note - I am aware that this list did end, I'm speaking figuratively... and I'm not even speaking either...)

However, none of this alters the fundamental fact that teaching is better in person and learning is more successful in a situation where social interaction takes place. Great teaching is about positive relationships and these are so much harder to build, develop and maintain in the online world.

In the spirit of blogging...

So I probably should do something like a proper blogger would do and put links or something on. So here goes - apologies to those who already know and use this stuff and for those who aren't teachers, well thanks for reading all the way down to here, but this next bit is definitely just for the educationalists.

Here are three online tools I have actually made reasonably productive use of. You may well have them or have used them before - I never promised to be original!

Mote: voice notes & feedback - this is an extension for Google Chrome that works with Classroom and most common Google office style apps. This allows free recording of up to 30 seconds of voice feedback through the comment function in Docs, Classroom and Slides (probably other stuff too, but I've not really explored further).
https://kahoot.com/ - Kahoot is the classic team and individual quiz site. It has some very useful features for teachers though - for example you can tell which question you have set have been the most and least successfully answered. A really powerful tool for identifying areas for revision and development - my sixth form Language class absolutely loved this! A top tip is to print the questions out ahead of time so the students can identify where they were right or wrong as they play - instant revision resource, homework and starter for the next lesson!
Padlet: The original 'sticky note' wall for online. This is essentially a single, online noticeboard where collaborators work together to produce shared resources on a topic or theme. The site allows uploading of different document formats and linking to a range of other sites and formats. Essentially it's a large scale electronic pinboard, good for group projects and plenary work.