7-5 Zoom Meeting

Chris, Kaitlin, and I met on Zoom at 9 AM on Friday, June 25th. We talked about the plans our schools have for next school year in regard to restrictions and learning options, such as virtual instruction (synchronous and asynchronous) and in-person instruction. All three of our school districts are saying that they are going to offer only in-person instruction and no virtual options. We are hesitant to believe this since our districts have changed their minds so many times. My district, for example, told families that they would have to pick virtual or in-person for a whole quarter and stick to it. We had students switching in and out of virtual all day long and we would get emails multiple times per day about what classrooms these kids were going to My district also let parents pick and choose virtual days on a daily basis for in-person students (Ex: if they miss the bus). My district is continuing to provide their own virtual academy but we had that before the pandemic. We caught up about what we have been up to lately outside of school and class. We also talked about the Twitter chat activity and how hilariously lost I was since I am not a Twitter user. Overall, it was a great experience getting to see the faces of the other people that are taking the class with me. I enjoyed connecting with them a lot!

How you might use these tools in the future to either connect with other teachers or to help your students connect? What do you hope to gain by using this technology?

I plan to continue to use Zoom for virtual, live instruction when we have snow days to connect with my students. I don’t typically do a whole group Zoom since that was done by the homeroom teachers for inclusion time but I could always offer it incase they want to connect with the kids in my room that come from various homerooms. I enjoyed using Zoom for virtual, individual instruction since I could share my screen and teach the students using Boom Cards. They could have remote access to the screen to manipulate the activities themselves but I chose to manipulative it myself and ask them questions to figure out which option they wanted to pick out of the activities and answers within the activities. I could use Zoom to connect with other teachers for professional development. During professional development training and meetings this year, it was so much easier to see the screen or presentation. I was able to take notes quickly and not miss anything. When we have staff meetings in-person, you have to make sure to get a good seat close to the screen or at least be at a decent angle to see. Otherwise, you have to rely on your hearing only or ask a coworker to borrow their notes later. I hope to continue to gain knowledge of features on Zoom as they update their website. I want to test out the whiteboard feature since I could explain mathematics much better on the digital whiteboard than the physical whiteboard. You should see me drawing on it, holding it up, then trying to erase, then writing again. It is a show! This whiteboard feature could also help me teach writing to a certain extent online as well. I have a Ziggy but it often would not work so I resorting to trying to teach writing on the physical whiteboard as I held it up in the air next to my face. I look forward to continuing to explore the features on Zoom to better prepare myself for any situation we might be in next school year.

3 thoughts on “7-5 Zoom Meeting

  1. I’m sorry I missed you all. It sounds like you had a great conversation. It will certainly be interesting to see how next year goes. Since you’ve already had a virtual academy, I’m curious to know how many students will be making the switch to the virtual academy. I think we all learned so much about Zoom (or similar apps) from this past year.

  2. I didn’t even think about the benefits of virtual staff meetings! It was definitely easier to have the presentation or the notes right in front of you instead of having to strain your eyes to see. I would say that our students may feel the same about this particular aspect. I know that there have been various times when a student has said “Miss Rando can I move up because I can’t see?”

  3. I actually ended up getting glasses and a big reason (other than my eyes just hurting) was during the faculty meetings and squinting to see the presentations. I got to use those glasses for a few meetings but since we went virtual I can see those presentation much easier and haven’t used them as much.

    Hopefully the whiteboard does make it easier for you to present things like math to your students. I remember those days of writing on several small whiteboards for video lessons and shuffling through, erasing, and reusing the whiteboards over and over again. Finding the right tools can make a difference.

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