7-5: Zoom / Google Meet

Growing up as a cyber-school student in grades 4-8, I participated in virtual classes using Blackboard Collaborate (formerly known as Elluminate). We used break-out rooms, collaborative whiteboards, the chat box, video, microphones, etc. This was all cutting edge collaborative technology in 2010 as cyber schools were in their early days. As a result, when COVID threw us all into the virtual world in 2020, I felt very confident using zoom as a teacher. Moving classes that are accustomed to face to face instruction to remote instruction overnight came with many severe challenges, but web conferencing capabilities, made the impossible possible and even had some benefits.

Benefits of Web Conferencing with Zoom/Google Meet/Microsoft Teams:

• Mute All – Although we can’t mute the distractions in students’ homes, we can mute all students in the meeting so that only person can have the mic at a time (a power we only can wish we had fully in the face to face classroom.)
• Breakout Rooms – Students can be divided into breakout rooms randomly or be hand selected by the teacher. In these rooms, students can only interact with one another. They can share files, share their screens, use interactive whiteboards, etc. and truly collaborate. When we returned to the face to face classroom, I missed some of the focused collaboration that was possible in zoom breakout rooms.
• Zoom Focus Mode – For office hours or project check-ins, zoom focus mode allows teachers to meet with groups of students, but for students to remain hidden from one another. Rather than being distracted by looking at each other’s videos or chatting in the chat box, they can interact with the teacher one-on-one while they work.
• Screen Sharing – When guiding students to complete virtual activities (I used many virtual labs, interactive lessons, formative assessment games, etc.), screen sharing allows teachers to model what students should be doing, where they should edit in a document, what link to click, etc. with ease! I would argue that giving directions while screen sharing on zoom is even more straight-forward and easy than asking a full classroom of students to look at the board and follow directions in a face to face classroom.
• Chat Box Control – The chat box allows students to share thoughts quickly and engage in conversation. Some of my quietest students felt comfortable sharing answers in the chat box. I was able to use the waterfall chat method to ask students to all submit their answers at once for questions, to encourage everyone to engage. When I am needing students’ full attention, I have the power to disable the chat box so that students can only message me.

Challenges:

• Cameras – Each district has their own policy about enforcing camera usage during online meetings. My district made camera usage optional for students’ privacy reasons, so many students chose to leave their cameras off, and thus it was very difficult to gauge engagement and understanding. I have heard that younger elementary grades had very high camera usage (and increased distraction with every student taking opportunities to show off their toys and pets), while older secondary grades had almost no camera usage at all. As a 6th grade teacher, I felt that my students were right in the middle of those two extremes, and I had almost 80% camera usage in each class.
• Students with SDIs – Several students have IEPs, 504s, or ELL modifications that involve individual check-ins, repeated instructions, etc. Being able to observe their cues and provide the support that they require was much more difficult over a web conferencing tool. However, for online education, web conferencing tools make these challenging supports possible.