Forever in the Middle: Collaboration in a Digital Classroom

 

Online learning has definitely increased the level of challenge in education today. Many of the strategies we use in face to face instruction have to be adapted to our new online classroom environments. Here are some ways that my students have been able to continue collaborating while learning from home.

Insert Learning
There are so many digital platforms that provide articles and comprehension questions for these articles within the text. I have always been a big fan of Newsela and Common Lit for this reason and also recently discovered and fell in love with Actively Learn. While there are a plethora of articles available through these sites, I may have something that I would like students to read that is not already available. This is where the Google extension Insert Learning comes in handy. I can take any text from Google Docs and turn it into an interactive response. This is great for really focusing on exactly the questioning or standards I want to address with that piece. Options for your responses are open ended questions, multiple choice response, and even collaboration boards. You can also insert sticky notes and highlight text to really guide student thinking as they work.

                           Discussion feature on Insert Learning.
                    Students can view peer responses in real time.

Jamboard
I started using Jamboard when I saw an idea for taking attendance using Jamboard. I tried it out and loved the ease of it and immediately saw how it could be utilized in the classroom in so many other ways.  Recently, I also used Jamboard to create a brainstorm for class thinking map in preparation for writing. I gave them time to add to the thinking map then changed them to "view only" and then grouped and arranged their ideas onto a completed map that they then used to write from. We added transition words and decided what order to include all our ideas. From there, students were able to demonstrate that they understood how to turn a Thinking Map into writing by writing a short summary of the information on the Thinking Map.  With another class, I separated the students into groups. Each group was to read a section of the article then come up with a maximum two sentence summary of that section. Their summary was then posted onto the class Jamboard. Once all responses were posted, I changed their access to "view only" and they were then able to use this to review before continuing work on the article independently. 

            Cause and Effect Map                        Compare and Contrast Map          
                       

         Jigsaw Article Summary

Padlet
This is an old favorite of mine. Students are able to respond on a message board setup in a variety of ways. They can simply post answers to questions, converse in a message board stream, and even respond to each other's answers. The free account allows up to 10 message boards, which I have always been able to work with. You can delete older boards once they are no longer in use. I use Padlet for ongoing discussion about something we are reading as well as a review of what we have already learned. 

Google Suite
Of course, there are always collaboration options through Google Apps. I have one of my classes starting book clubs next week in small groups of four and we will be collaborating using some of the above options but will regularly communicate using a group response form in Google Sheets and a weekly check in with Google Forms. The benefit of using both is that the students within the group can communicate with each other on the Sheet but they can communicate with only me on the form. This will allow me to see how they are all contributing and to alert me of problems that I hadn't seen within the Doc. Click here for a simple template for Book Club online collaboration.

This year is definitely not what anyone expected, but I know that we are all doing what we can to make the learning meaningful from a distance. Please share some of your amazing ideas below so we can continue to inspire each other!

Keep the magic alive,

Kandyce Valverde