Most teachers understand the importance of presenting students with materials and ideas in a structured and intentional way.
We organize the materials in our classroom to maximize efficiency and minimize disruption.
We organize the delivery of content to minimize confusion and maximize comprehension.
We explain procedures in clear and sequential ways and in manageable chunks to minimize distraction and maximize class flow.
We have learned these practices through years or real-time feedback from students: we know when class is going poorly, when students are confused, when there are distractions. We learn and adjust.
Carefully structured procedures, intentionally organized materials, and carefully designed instructions are even more important in virtual instruction and cannot be as easy adjusted on the fly. We will not see the look of confusion on our students’ faces as we are delivering material to them.
In the virtual environment, a poor organization will be a fog between your students and understanding. And because we don’t witness them struggle In real-time, we cannot remove the fog at the moments when it would be most Important do so. They are lost.
One way to bridge the gap between our well-developed in-person skills and our developing virtual skills is to create a virtual classroom that looks like a physical one. A Bitmoji classroom can allow teachers and students to interact with class materials in a way that feels more natural than is sterile list of resources and links in a typical learning management system.
The Bitmoji classroom presented above, for an Introduction to Film course, presents students with a feeling of a theater so it as appropriate to the topic. It presents the film being discussed that day or week with a link to background information on the film, on the virtual white board it presents a list of required readings, and announces and links to the synchronous session. It even presents an an “easter egg” link to a contrasting film through a poster on the wall. Instructions for creating your own bitmoji classroom are here.
While this method of organization is visually appealing, there are limits to its functionality. Because most materials and assignments are likely to be housed in a system such as Google Classroom, students will ultimately need to use Google Classroom for their lessons at some point, which means learning to navigate two different sources. It also bifurcates the delivery of announcements, content, and assignments.
As a student, do I look at the Bitmoji classroom for the date of the next synchronous meeting? Will Google Classroom contain all assignments or do I also need to look at the bitmoji classroom to be sure I’ve submitted everything on time?
If your (carefully) planned delivery of content includes two distinct modes, such as a set of daily work presented in a Bitmoji classroom each day and separate long-range projects presented in Google Classroom, then this bifurcation could actually be used to your and your students’ benefit.
A Bitmoji classroom could be a useful part of a virtual teaching strategy. But an ability to organize content clearly inside of a more traditional LMS such as Google Classroom is still an essential teacher skill to assure student success. Jen Roberts from the Lit and Tech blog has provided some useful options for organizing content in Google Classroom:
Use the “categories” feature to organize multi-step assignments. Each assignment is a category and all of the sub-assignments that belong together are grouped under that category. Or...
Include each sub-assignment as a separate attachment to a single Google Classroom assignment. Or...
Create a single “hyperdoc” that includes instructions, links to materials, and opportunities for completing the sub-assignments all in one document.
Roberts ranks these options in ascending order, with the hyperdoc being the “best.” I think the organizing principle should depend on your students, your content, and your teaching style.
For example, if you intend on scoring assignments in Google Classroom, or using its powerful (and time-saving) rubric feature, you will need to take that into consideration when organizing assignments. If multiple assignments are grouped together as one assignment in Google Classroom, you will not be able to give separate feedback or scores for the separate sections. Instead, you will need to create a separate Google Classroom assignment for each item you want to score separately.
Organizing materials and assignments is essential for any classroom. For the virtual classroom it requires even more careful consideration before students ever access the class. I’m a virtual learning environment we cannot see the students confusion in real-time and redirect. Virtual learning is as new to them as it is to use. Lack of clarity is a real risk to learning in a virtual environment. Careful organization is a key to dispersing the fog of confusion before it settles in.
Sources:
Blakemore, T. (2020, May 5). Interactive Bitmoji Classroom Tutorial | Google Classroom and Seesaw. Youtube. https://youtu.be/Y3ZiClcIYJs
Roberts, J. (2020, May 16). How do I organize my google classroom? Lit and Tech. http://www.litandtech.com/2020/05/ho-do-i-organize-my-google-classroom.html