St. Emily / St. Thomas Becket<br />Religious Education&#8203;
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Distance Learning  - How To and Tools

These are resources, including instructional videos, to help you learn to be proficient at Distance Learning.    To explore teaching and class management techniques, both online and digital, go to that page. To find web based tools for catechesis , go to that page.
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BEGINNING TO TEACH ONLINE

Tips and Background
  • Escape the Fear Academy - Classroom Management.  Zoom session is here.   Password: uiD$5Pw1. The  slide presentation is here.
  • A great intro video that gets you started from Joe Paprocki
  • Sadlier session one of three - moving to online instruction.
  • Sadlier session two of three - how to prepare for your class and best practices.
  • Sadlier  session three of three - conducting class online - good for  thinking about how remote teaching is different from the classroom.  You need to sign in  on Zoom to register.
  • Handy video session checklist.
  • Seven Guidelines for Setting Up Clear Online Lessons
  • Translating  what    I used to do to what I can do in the digital classroom.
  • Keys to Success in distance learning
  • 10 Fun Ways to Use Technology
  • Assessment.  How do we know that kids know something?  Some  of these points can apply to RE.
  • Four Key Aspects of Online Teaching.  Many of you have reported  that you have discovered many of these through your own experience.  
  • How to build an online learning community.    Some of these tips can work in your RE learning group.
  • Tips for online instruction​
  • How to read the virtual room
  • Two simple ways to improve online instruction - interaction and collaboration
  • Eight Strategies to Improve Participation in the virtual classroom
  • How to  flip the classroom:  
    •  Go here  to access the class recordings and resources: 
    • After watching the videos, go here to get your Certificate of Participation.  
  • Ministering to Catholic kids in a digital world.
    • ​Go here to access the class recordings and resources.
    • After watching the videos, go here to get your Certificate of Participation. 
Important tools
  • Safe YouTube.  Use this to generate links to YouTube videos free of ads and adult content.  I am leaving this here in the event it works again.  As of 9-9-20, SafeYouTube has been hacked  and all links using it have been scrambled.
  • Classroomscreen.com - puts up widgets on your screen that are very useful during class - a drawing board, polls, ways to call randomly  on students, etc.
    • This YouTube is a video training  for this tool.

Getting started with your class
  • ​Virtual  icebreakers   you can use on Zoom
  • And another set of icebreakers for remote meetings
  • 50 back to school activities for remote learning .  Some of these might be useful starter activities.
  • Teaching good procedures at the beginning helps  everyone:
    • Video that teaches hand signals that can be used online, especially when the students are muted.
    • "Fist to five" is a good indicator of agreement or understanding.

THE BASIC TOOLS

This quick start guide can help you with the basic tools.  There are slides for YouTube, Zoom, Google Classroom and Screencastify. (Advance each slide by scrolling down.  Click on the links for more orientation.)

Zoom  Meetings - the technology and tips
  • Escape the Fear Academy session 1 - holding an online session.    Password:   r3Ej#B@i
  • How to use the Whiteboard in Zoom
  • Seven Tips for Screensharing in Zoom
  • How to manage breakouts
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Using Google Classroom
In Google, you will probably most  use Forms, Sheets, Docs and Slides.  If your parish uses Google Classroom, you will have that as a base in which to keep lessons organized.
  • A step-by-step YouTube training on Google Classroom  Your classrooms are already set up and you will be communicating with parents/guardians only.
  • Setting up  a    Google Classroom
  • Get more  value out    of Google Classroom
  • A   video guide to how to set up a Google classroom    and   help you get organized
  • How to   organize a Google Classroom    and your   Google Drive
  • Making a   Google Form template
  • Make a worksheet    for Google Classroom
  • Turn a   worksheet into a  digital document
  • How to make Google forms for the classroom - reactions, polls, quizzes
  • Self-grading quizzes in Google Classroom
  • Rubrics are probably not that useful for Religious Ed, but here is how to set them up, if you'd like
  • Using Google Slides in your lessons

THE ADD-ONS
  • EdPuzzle lets you insert questions that need to be answered into online videos and then assign them.  
  • PearDeck      is  an add-on which makes a Google Slide presentation interactive.  
    • A training webinar that shows you how to use it.  Very easy.
  • NearPod makes a lesson interactive and gives you ways to assess student understanding in the course of the lesson
    • A YouTube training for NearPod
  • Screencastify - the way to make a video to teach 
    • ​One instructional video that shows how to use it
    • Another step-by-step    instructional video
  • Kahoot - a fun quiz game that kids love.
  • ​Jamboard  is available in the Google Suite.  
    • Here are some tips about how to use it.
  • ​Whiteboard.fi is an online whiteboard program.  Students can also respond with their own.
    • A tutorial on how to use Whiteboard
  • Cram makes flash card sets that you can push out to your students.  Quizlet is more fun, but costs money and asks for families to  create accounts.
  • ​Using Flipgrid
    • ​A step-by-step guide to setting up Flipgrid.   A video demonstration of how it works. (Check with your DRE to see if there will be an account already established.)   
    • Using   Flipgrid    to teach
    • This video was made before Flipgrid revised some of its terminology, but it gives great tips about recording the instructor (catechist) video.
    • 50 Ways to use Flipgrid.  These are designed for 'regular' school, but many of the activities can be adapted for RE.