Play music and have a holiday sing-off. Schedule a time to have a virtual yoga, meditation, or workout session with your gym buddy, using FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Zoom, or any preferred app to connect with each other, then pressing "play" on the same exercise video. The best part is it’s packed with links of curriculum and CONNECTION ideas! Jim Craigmyle Getty Images You can also make video calls, which are the next best thing to face-to-face interactions. When all programs at the Jane Club, including child circle time, and teach-ins, went virtual practically overnight, Valdes linked to Zoom on her computer and found herself face to face with her most consistent student, sitting in her living room. We even have stolen some luxurious moments where we ignore everything else and just read together under a blanket and cuddle! The first platform that’s helped create normalcy is utilizing Actively Learn - a digital reading platform that does it all (check it out in Amanda’s insta stories highlights for elearning!). Here are 35 ways to get the most out of your online networking. Offer audio book apps like Audible and Sora to make reading more accessible. Tell us what you are looking for. Rosbe picked that years ago. Share. She received emails asking her to read aloud. Watch and read L.A. native Amanda Gorman’s inauguration day poem. I’m going to get creative about it, because what else can we do?”, How a Hollywood poker game keeps the camaraderie — and trash talk — going on Zoom. With this option, you’ll have to setup individual Google Meets and label them for each group so the students know which one to attend. You can set up “Coffee Meetings”, where team members each go to a coffee shop … Create Social Media Events - Small gatherings and big conferences based on social media are the rage, and will continue to surge as people look for ways to connect with online friends in real … 20 March 2020. Faisst, a scientist at the Caltech Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in Pasadena, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Tan, who also works at Caltech, had made dinner plans with four friends for Monday. resource. 5 Ways To Help Teams Connect Virtually. Actor and writer Ashley Bank O’Leary, hasn’t seen her father or stepmother in more than a week. It’s 10 a.m. and my 4-year-old races to the computer on our coffee table. For more tech tools and ideas to connect with your students online, head to Abby’s blog here. In fact, with a few free tools, Jenna from. 12 Creative Ways to Connect with Students Online, With the pressure of high-stakes testing taken off your plate, now is the perfect time to add creative learning selections to your virtual menu! Getting your group together to watch a show, a documentary, or a movie and chat through it is an awesome and fun way to stay connected. You can learn more and read about Shana’s favorite Chrome extensions for teachers and students here, here, and here. Each slide has clickable links for the reader to choose her own adventure and they’re so much fun to read and write! FlipGrid is highly accessible to students through chromebooks, phones, or desktop computers. You’ll notice I’ve not put phonecalls on the list, and it’s not (just) because I’m a Millenial who hates the phone. Pay attention. Look for ways to make mini-connections with your kids throughout the day. Give students with limited access the opportunity to create questions that students on Padlet can answer. If you want to take this feature a step further, consider letting students generate their own questions for a mini virtual, If you are ready to try a new tech tool, consider online “backchannel” discussion platforms like. Almost overnight, virtual gatherings of all kinds are cropping up across the internet, aided by easy-to-use technology like Google Hangouts, Zoom, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix Party and Facebook Watch Parties. For example, you can have students message the student above/below them on the participants lists or to the left/right on the grid view of screens. A novel asks hard questions about early Black entrepreneurs. Emily instructs students how to use FlipGrid to create short, creative video responses to their reading. They checked in with their breath and focused their attention on various parts of their bodies with Valdes’ soothing voice as their guide. But that’s not stopping Alex Zaragoza from engaging in one of her favorite pastimes: karaoke. Like many other teachers, I went through a brief period of mourning. Using the Google Form allows me to add in some social and emotional learning aspects into my remote teaching, while also providing my students with a way to easily ask me a question. 12 classic board games you can play online with friends and family; Here are 40 fun, free things to do online while you're stuck at home; 28 ways to leave home without actually leaving the couch, from virtual zoo exhibits to museum gallery tours I can export the data to Google Sheets to easily sort the information. Being in the backyard together is even more rejuvenating. Spice up your Zoom calls with some fun and games. Using Google Forms for daily or attendance check-ins has many benefits. For more tech tools and ideas to connect with your students online, head to Abby’s blog here. Lianna Colaso, who has two children at the school — one in kindergarten and another in third grade — helped gather 20 kindergartners together for a virtual playdate via Zoom on Wednesday. “I want to have virtual coffees or cocktail hour. While driving home from school, standing in line at the grocery store, or when they are just hanging around the kitchen waiting for dinner to be ready. The same group regularly gets together to play bridge and other games, so it wasn’t a surprise when someone suggested playing 20 questions. Has your school tried a digital spirit week? Literature circles are a great way to facilitate discussions virtually because each student has a separate role that they are in charge of presenting to the group. Kami allows users to upload documents or images and convert them to PDFs that can be, . To make the Digital Spirit Week idea more flexible, you could have a weekly content instead of daily content to allow time for creation. Share. Choose a fun group game such as Scattergories, Pictionary, Bingo, and Cards Against Humanity and let the best player win. Just like in-person learning, a predictable structure makes students feel stable and less anxious. These are some fab, fun, alternative ways to get connected – … Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher likes to use Padlet to create, connect, and collaborate with students. Here’s a roundup of stories from some of the most interesting virtual gatherings we have found in these still-early days of a growing crisis. I think when I or my husband turn off the tv, put the cell phone away, and just sit down on the floor, my 1 year old comes up with her own interactions and ways to play and connect with us, since she’s still so young. Here are a few ways she likes to engage with students: Staci likes to create a Padlet and have students share, so responses can be visible to the entire class, but students also have the capability of making their own for full customization and a deeper analysis! Dial *67 before any student phone numbers to keep your own phone number private. Virtual Game Night. It might also be helpful to schedule the group presentations at different times so you can attend all meetings. “They just say, ‘hi,’ ‘hi, ‘hi.’ ”. About sharing. As a certified reading specialist, Melissa has no shortage of ideas for using books to build relationships with students and create positive classroom cultures for older students. These apps, websites, games, and activities maintain friendships from a … as a tool for keeping the magic alive in the distance learning classroom. ! Unique ways to connect: The importance of finding different ways to sustain your connection. Students join (this is not required!) If they’re going to be on it anyway, imagine how much fun and creativity they could demonstrate by blending content into short TikToks. resource. Calling too many students would obviously be overwhelming, but most likely, the numbers of students who cannot access through email or a recording would be low. The creative digital learning projects provide the perfect opportunity for students and teachers to connect by showing off their creations together through digital platforms. But when social distancing and quarantines because of coronavirus became a daunting reality, the group got serious quickly. Make sure everyone knows beforehand that they need to stay at least six feet apart. We know that our kids (and maybe...admittedly, ourselves haha) are getting more and more into TikTok. Learn it., uses FlipGrid as a tool for keeping the magic alive in the distance learning classroom. My father, Joseph Gelt, is one such person. Shawnta Valdes isn’t big on technology. has been focusing on two major goals: providing structure and creating normalcy. 8 Ways to Leverage Recognition During the COVID-19 Pandemic Here are eight tips for how you can leverage recognition to keep employees engaged while working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Birthday parties, brunches, play dates and poker nights — as well as dance, art, language, math and reading classes — are all being held virtually. Share funny videos, do some riddles and brainsteasers, put music on in the background. “And I have to say, much to my own surprise, the connection is just as deep, as real, and as effective.”. Now there are other ways to get on the road and connect with others. From now on the group will meet via Google Hangouts more frequently than before. Has your school tried a digital spirit week? The, extension helps by allowing teachers to see students’ video thumbnails on a single grid, rather than just a list of names off to the side. Learn it., uses. Then have students add their ideas with evidence and explanations within each column. So when the New York transplant was told that she needed to teach her daily meditation class virtually via Zoom, she immediately thought, “This isn’t going to work.” Valdes is the director of member engagement at the Jane Club, a shared workspace for women and working moms in Los Angeles, and every day for the past two years she has guided her community of professional moms through daily awareness-based group meditation. When she transitioned to online learning, she began by pre-recording herself. There are many fun and creative ways to connect with our grandchildren during COVID-19. Make beautiful boards, documents, and webpages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to. Finally, it saves all of the data so that I have a record of my student check-ins. Review: Uplift or minstrelsy? Follow this step-by-step approach to build relationships with key influencers. Staci Lamb from. Together, I worked with 12 other Secondary English educators to gather the best ideas for keeping the magic alive in our online classrooms. Emily models how to use the whiteboard option to write out a response or even draw an animated response. Final Projects or the Planning Stages of Writing: Use Padlet Timelines for literal comprehension, like tracking events in a story, or ask students to get more creative by making a timeline of a character’s life based on textual evidence and inferences. All ideas are editable, so you can recreate some of the digital choices with similar paper activities. This is just another way to encourage their collaboration and communication and to learn from each other. 5 Ways to Connect Employees Through Mobile At Emplify, we’re helping companies realize the benefits of using employee engagement mobile apps to support a more connected workforce . The virtual nature of the gathering allows family members from around the country — who wouldn’t have been able to travel to L.A. for the originally scheduled event — to participate. This Form is fully editable, and you can customize it to suit your own needs! Surname. ), to jump on new bandwagons and explore every new free edtech resource being offered right now. She understands the challenges with time management for students in a digital world. Currently the group is reading “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger” by Rebecca Traister. “This is a beautiful way for us to connect,” Valdes says. Differentiation: Mail paper versions of class work and agendas, or if your school has meal delivery, see if work can be sent home with meals. Andreas Faisst loves to socialize, so when self-isolation measures meant he couldn’t go to dinner with friends, he switched to a virtual get-together. For students with few books at home or limited Internet access, print and share paper copies of short stories from the public domain. Coronavirus: Ways to stay social online while in self-isolation. I was missing the magic of face-to-face interactions with my kids, the magic of inside jokes, the magic of close proximity when a student struggled to pay attention to a lesson, the magic of eye contact and showing a student with a simple look that we would get through this together. ! 4. resource so that students can share book recommendations and inspiration with peers. With the pressure of high-stakes testing taken off your plate, now is the perfect time to add creative learning selections to your virtual menu! Because so much of our face-to-face communication is nonverbal, not being able to see students’ faces or reactions online can feel a bit strange. For even more ideas for creating magic in the classroom, check out Emily's post on. Reason to connect. You can read more of her ideas on her blog, Reading and Writing Haven. I can share the shortened link via Remind so that students have easy access to the Form. Google Meet is another free resource for video chats. Micheltorena Street Elementary School in Silver Lake is closed, but some room parents are doing their best to make sure the kids don’t feel too disconnected from their friends. By doing these two things, she hopes to establish a foundation for learning to happen. In an attempt to create normalcy, Amanda has tried to streamline instruction in limited platforms and focus on the ones that her class had already been using before school ended. Differentiation idea: For students who cannot participate at a specific time, Zoom and Google both have options to record meetings. The data showed her that students watch the videos. If you’re struggling with this disconnect and missing your students, try incorporating some form of online discussion. Use this! For students with little to no Internet access, ask for prompts that can be shared in class chats or to start virtual turn and talk discussions, then share classmates' answers via email. Video chatting platforms like Zoom can be great tools for connecting face-to-face with friends, family, and loved ones. Leeman used Zoom’s chat room feature to keep track of the questions. These discussions thrive on interaction between group members, and this interaction can absolutely happen in the virtual classroom with live video tools. Emily instructs students how to use FlipGrid to create short, creative video responses to their reading. What better way to have fun with your team than to celebrate holidays? After students complete the reflection process, she administers a class survey that combines standing agreements with ideas captured from student reflections. A time-stamped list of participants is exported to a spreadsheet, making it easy to log and reference later if needed. Ashley Bible at. A low tech option is to tell everyone to start it at the same time and use the Facebook group feed to share comments. They may have restrictions or additional guidelines to follow. If you are hosting live lessons through a video conferencing platform, you can easily facilitate discussions. The. When you ask a question, students can not only reply, but they can also see their classmates’ responses and comment on them. The ‘Question to Ask Out Loud’ section was one of my favorites. It might also be helpful to schedule the group presentations at different times so you can attend all meetings. Another fun way Staci has used this layout is to create an A-Z Guide to Being at Home where her students posted different ways they are staying busy during this time at home. “It’s interesting to see how the fellowship adapts and changes based on the needs of the community.”. Anchor charts: On a Padlet shelf, content can be organized in columns. 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