I’ve been a teacher for 6 years, a minimalist for one, but I started teaching online only when Mr Covid-19 hit. Locked at home, I read articles and posts, listened to podcasts, attended a MOOC and a few webinars, watched videos and tutorials. Not to brag, it’s just that I had lots of time then and no Netflix. Anyway. From this insightful but endless stream of information out there there are two golden rules I’m never going to let go of.
Golden rule #1. Keep it Basic.
Pick one video conferencing platform for live sessions. Zoom for groups, Skype if you only have one-on-one lessons. There are probably better or even perfect platforms out there but time and energy are precious resources – and who wants to waste them? I’m a big fan of Skype’s clean layout and Zoom’s basic features, if I were a programmer I’d have definitely done a nice job of copy and paste – you hear me programmers out there?
I'm going to go as far as saying: have only one Zoom meeting link you can share with all your students. Control who can enter from Zoom's waiting room.Pick one LMS (Learning Management System) platform. This is where you’ll leave important messages to your students and post assignments. If your school has got one already, great. Otherwise use Edmodo for teens and adults, Class Dojo for younger learners. Again, stop looking for alternatives, these two are free, easy to set up and have everything you really need. To get started with an LMS, click here.
Learn and use basic features only. In Zoom, here are all the things I consider basic:
Scheduling recurring meetings so your students have ONE link they click on when it’s lesson time.
Muting/Unmuting your students so as to limit background noise.
Sharing your screen (valid for Skype too).
Teaching your students how to use the chat box and to raise/lower their virtual hands – children can raise their real hands as long as they have their camera on.
Setting up Breakout Rooms for learners to do pair and group work and increase STT (Student Talking Time).
Golden rule #2: Good Enough is Good Enough.
Basic planning. Think of your lesson as a toast sandwich: bread (warmer), filling (short, meaningful activities around your lesson goal), bread (cool-down/error correction). Remember: toast sandwich, not Big Mac.
Basic material. If you and your students have a coursebook, use it! Snap a picture of the activities you like, change them slightly if necessary to better suit your teaching style, your learner’s interests or your lesson’s goal. Interactive materials, quizzes etc. look cool but do they really bring extra value to your lesson or students’ learning? You have to consider whether the time and energy spent to set them up and to teach your learners how to access and interact with them are worth it or not. Usually not.
Basic presentation. I’m a Millennial but I use the old-fashioned PowerPoint with one activity on each slide. It’s basic, easy to set-up, easy to share, easy to annotate without having to find and use extra tools. The title of each slide is usually a one-word instruction (eg. Listen, Match, Discuss, About, Answer), you are going to tell your students what to do anyway. I save any Youtube link at the bottom of a slide in the “notes” box, and use my ad-free browser Brave to share videos. I have created a tutorial on how to use Power Point to create anything you want, including Kahoot quizzes.
Basic assignments. Homework is an opportunity for students to strengthen their knowledge and take responsibility for their learning. I post on Edmodo simple tasks which leave room for differentiation and that are quick to correct. These include simple projects, writings in which they have to include specific language but for which they can set the context (eg. “Write an email to invite a friend to do something together”: learners can still decide what that something is), or – my favourite – a list of tasks from which they can choose the one they like best. I post ideas on homework assignments on my gallery.
Conclusions
As teachers, we want to make a good impression on our students but we should really stop trying to look cool, we should strive to be cool, and there’s no tool on the Internet that can help us with that. Our time and energy are better spent trying to create a rapport with our students and setting activities can really help them improve. Basic and minimalist do not mean lazy and boring. Deciding what’s really important for our learners and discarding the rest is no easy task.