30 Aug My Must – Have Distance Learning Tools

This remote teaching thing is legit.  

It’s legitimately difficult. There is so much more than just learning about our students, teaching our content, and figuring out ways to meet student academic and emotional needs.  Adding the layer of — and now do it all online is difficult.  Not impossible, but let’s not kid ourselves, difficult.

It’s legitimately time-consuming.  Everything takes me twice as long, at least.  It takes me twice as long to plan.  Content I already knew and understood, now I spend my normal planning time mapping out my lessons, but now I spend double the time (at least) figuring out the best way to have students interact, receive, and engage with the content in authentic and meaningful ways.  New content? New curriculum? New grade level? Oh, forget it.  Double the double on time.  

But…. I (we) are figuring it out, and well, we are teachers– we are too legit to quit (shout out to MC Hammer) and I am constantly trying to model mathematical practice number #1, Make Sense and persevere in problem-solving even to myself.   Each day gets a little better, I figure out a new tool, a new management technique to use online, and most importantly, those I get to teach are filling my teacher’s heart to the brim.  They need me.  I can do this.  I can do hard things.  

So, here are the tools I’ve purchased over the last year (I really started the teaching remotely thing about a year ago with online courses and webinars, beta student groups, etc. but had to go ALL in last spring).  These are the tools I think have saved me time.  Now, I wish I could say just buy them and plug them in…but noooooo that’d be too simple.  So here’s my advice.

Try. Take a breath. Walk away. Come back to it.

Google it.

Youtube it.

Embrace the suck.

I recently bought a new lapel microphone based on the advice of my friend, @RobertKaplinksy.  I thought the mic I had worked just fine and not being an audio connoisseur, I couldn’t really tell the difference.  I knew having a mic mattered because I could definitely tell the audio difference between no mic and a mic.  Regardless, he talked me into this one.  I purchased it and plugged in.  Can’t be that hard, right?  Well for most of the world, I’m sure it works just fine, the first time.  But, that’s never my luck.  The mic first didn’t register, then the volume was too low.  I played around with it for a good 5 hours, ok, so it was only thirty minutes, but when tech doesn’t work it feels much much longer.

I HATE THIS.

Nevermind. I left it and went on with my other tasks.

WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS?

But, I persisted.  A day or so later, I needed to do a recording and knew I had to come back to the darn mic.  

I can do hard things. Deep breath. Ok, like three.

I googled it.  “Why does my lapel microphone have low volume?”  Sure enough, about ten tutorials and videos popped up that directly addressed my issue with my type of device.  Ten minutes later, I had a great working mic with the right volume.

This isn’t to discourage you, in fact, it was probably one of the more frustrating new tools I’ve purchased, but in hindsight, it wasn’t the tool or it not working.  It was the “I have too many other things to learn and do right now to mess with this” which really caused my frustration.  

Step away.  Take a breath. But don’t give up.

My friends, we can do this.  It’s not pretty, it’s not easy, but I’ve never let those things stand in my way before.  We figure them out. We get through them, and we’re proud of ourselves.

I’m proud of you.  You’ve done some really hard things already and we are just getting started.

It really is amazing what you can figure out with your search engine. So go google it, my friends.

Here are my favorite tools so far:

That darn lapel mic. 

Ok, so not actually one of my favorite tools, but my most recent and I do have to say I’m starting to ‘hear’ the difference, and more importantly other people can hear it.

Ring light-– like for real. It makes a difference. I like this one the best because of how it dims and the tripod feature is better than the ones I have to maneuver and fit the back of a screen, etc. 

This image shows my two ring lights- because I’m an overachiever– no really it’s because I do a lot of recorded videos and I found I was still getting shadows with just one.  But I had just the one for a good 6 months and still thought it was a major upgrade.  I also have this one.  I travel (or I should say I used to…) a lot to teach and this one could go in my bag and I could attach it to my surface laptop (would attach to any laptop/tablet/phone device) on the go.  It was an upgrade, but not as great as the ones above.

Without the ring light, regular room light

With my ring light

Two monitors. Honestly, the best investment ever.  I have a ‘splitter’ (I don’t know if it has an actual name– Google it and ask the smart tech guy at Best Buy) that connects the two monitors.  This allows me to have my Google slides, or other presenting info on one monitor and my zoom screen with all my student’s faces on the other. With just one monitor, I only could really have one or the other.  I wanted the gallery of faces.  I have several peers that do this and they elevate one of the monitors above and behind the single monitor so that they are always looking straight ahead and not to the side (basically it makes it look like you are always looking at your students).

In addition to my regular desktop computer, I also have a secondary device, a Surface Pro.  Before, I had my laptop (surface pro) and a secondary monitor attached to that.  This summer I ended up using my regular desktop.  Then, I wanted to get better at modeling and drawing during my lessons on zoom. The mouse and I weren’t working out that great.  I got better for sure, but I knew I’d be more comfortable with a pen option. 

 I log into Zoom on my regular device that has the two monitors now.  Then,  I also log into the zoom meeting on my Surface Pro.  I turn off the volume and mute myself on the Pro to avoid any feedback. This allows me to share my screen on zoom when it is time (so, to be clear, I am on the zoom twice. As the host on my main computer, I have to add my second self (once logged in) as a cohost so I can have rights to share my screen). I bring up the slide deck on my surface pro and then screen share and write (touch screen) with a stylus so that I can draw and model for students.  It’s way easier for me than trying to draw with my mouse.  

Of course, if you are using a document camera, it could take the place of needing to do this. But, it felt like all of my slides were where I wanted to write and so the doc.  camera hasn’t been my go-to.  You should do what is most comfortable. 

Stylus.  I use this one.  It was cheaper than the all-stars you can buy on the internet, and honestly, it works great for me. I notice the price has increased a bit– supply and demand :).  Note that this fits my surface, so be sure to get a stylus that connects to your device.  It does require the smallest batteries known to man, and I do have to replace them every month or so.  So be sure to add those to your cart if you are buying a stylus.

Blue light glasses. Yes, I am a dork.  Maybe they are for real, or maybe they’re a scam, but honestly, my eyes are killing me with all of this computer work and I notice a difference in my overall headaches and eye strain when I wear them.  Plus, they add an “I’m cool and smart” aspect to my job, even if only in my mind.  Both my kids steal them to wear and take selfies, so I take that as a win that they are putting me higher on the ‘My kids think I’m cool’ pyramid, which let’s be real, I was at the bottom.  Truth be told, I just bought both children a pair (11 and 13 years old) as they’ve both complained this week about their eyes (first week of remote learning for them too).  

Ignore the cheesy grin.  Focus on the ‘cool’ factor.  😉

And what if you have none of these things?

You’ll take a deep breath.  Do what you have always done and figure out the best way to be the best teacher you can be with what you have.  If you have the opportunity to improve your digital space, these are a few recommendations.

What’s been your fave distance learning find?

P.S. Yes, this post has affiliate links.  I use these actual products and have linked them via Amazon.