Remote Learning - Pedagogy first?

We have been doing a lot over the last month (and in the coming months) to support schools and school systems to get ready for what seems to inevitably a remote learning experience during the isolation phase of the recent pandemic, CoviD-19.

My personal worry is not the technology it is the pedagogy. Remote Learning is a delivery method, quality of teaching comes first. What keeps me awake at night at the minute is that I think teachers and schools will transpose timetables into Online learning. For example: A school might have 6 lessons at a typical high school per day. Simply putting on 6 lessons on Microsoft Teams for example would work very well, however, are we missing a trick here? Are we are transposing an already broken, industrial model into the digital age? Surely the true promise of digital education is more that that? It has to be integrated, it has to be connected, it has to authentic and it has to be worthwhile. Are we learning from the tools that they use today outside school? Are we setting them up for careers of the future and work of the future using tools they will use in the workplace? It is absolutely not about video conferencing and lesson recording on its own. It is also not about going into an online system and reading a PDF and doing a test! One thing that is for certain, video conferencing platforms alone will help a little with the current situation but are not a long term fix for learning remotely. Anyone who has done a MOOC can testify to that. The long term fix are platforms of integration. At Microsoft we use Teams for everything and remote working is integrated. Meetings, Meeting Notes, recordings, transcriptions, real time language translation, whiteboards, screen sharing, document collaboration, third party integration... it is all there and all adds to the experience.

So here are my ideas on how to do challenge yourself and your school or school system (or even your corporate environment) using Microsoft Teams and really get to the 'M' and R' in SAMR and supercharge your remote learning:

• Setup learning communities NOT lessons - Do not set up your timetable online the same as it is at school. This is will be a disaster! Think about alternative ways to engage. Depending on the year group this will be different. Weekly calls? Weekly lecture and weekly tutorial? For year 12 this might be more content led?
• Remember to cater for all. Accessibility is key, turn on auto captioning and live translation features so no-one is left behind. Teams has this and so do the Office tools such as PowerPoint.
• Start to think about large 6 week integrated projects the students can work on together in groups. Collaborate in the Team across Microsoft Office (Word, PPT, Excel, Forms etc) Get inspired by some of the project briefs from online courses. There are some amazing schools in Australia using PBL so also search for #pblchat #ausedchat on Twitter to connect.
• Create subject specific communities across the years or even across schools - Why do we educate in age groups? Lets use this to address the modern industrial batch model popularized and agitated by Sir Ken Robinson. We can do projects to cover multiple year groups, gender and groupings. We can connect to other schools and experts. Can we get people to Teams call with your students? Can we do a careers week? A CV writing week? Setting up your Linkedin account week, and so on...
• Create special interest communities - It's a great opportunity to set up those communities for coding clubs, Minecraft and e-sports?
• Increase the Tech Intensity - Use the time to do some real industry work such as Microsoft Azure, Unity for games development, Hololens development, AI. Look for courses on EdX or Microsoft Learn.
• Let the students create communities of their own. Do adults and teachers and the government really know best? Can the students can be in control of the own learning? Surely the answer here is YES. See what they can create.
• VC - Supplement these great Microsoft Teams (communities) you have created with some Video Conferencing and teacher input however take the model of flipped learning and really own it. Video based lessons DO NOT have to be an hour or the same length of time as a lesson in the real world. Cut the times down to 30mins max. The communities are where the magic (also called learning) happens not on a video call.
• Personalized learning. With all the time freed up from the traditional curriculum what should teachers be doing? Interacting in the communities. Giving feedback. Adding additional value. Offering advice. Setting up tutorial to support. The things that really make a difference
• Do a conference? The CEWA ViSN network runs an annual conference via Teams. With careful planning everyone could do this.
• Don't forget the others - Don't forget the educational psychologists? Can they run programmes for your students on anxiety etc? The learning support teams, how can they be involved and help? The administration staff can also be using Teams to keep the school running as well as driving continuity of service of for the staff and parents.

I used to work at a Sydney Uni in their blended learning team. This approach was totally about pedagogy first in an online world and more of the R in SAMR. Se we can learn from everyone here. Work with your local Uni or other schools. We are all in this together.

Some links here to help if you are new to Microsoft Teams: