Online Learning in a Hurry Guest episode 6 - Alec Couros - Student's in spaces

Trying to deal with all sorts of different things and a different tool for each kid and a different teacher with a different mindset. It's been a lot of fun, but really challenging. I'm sure a lot of people who are listening certainly feel that as well.

Absolutely.

So what do you got for us today? So I've been thinking about. Okay, so what's behind me? What's behind you? I can just see a yellow screen here before. But it's really the idea of really thinking about the context of what we're doing right now. So when we're thinking about remote teaching and learning, there's a context, or when we're in a classroom, we're in the context of the classroom. And usually, I mean, some of the baggage that kids, that students bring in or their history, their context is hidden with the institutional walls. But, you know, I've been really. I teach online courses and only online courses these days, and mostly to graduate students these days. So if you can imagine, you know, my regular Tuesday night, Tuesday evening is I teach in Zoom. So I've got 25 boxes, and each one of these boxes has a different story. So there's kids, you know, walking around, there's dogs and cats and whatever else is happening. There's screaming kids, screaming here and there. Stuff that probably I don't want to hear at sometimes, but every once in a while. We were talking about Tick tock the other day and, you know, and my students didn't really know what this is. So these are teachers who are graduate students, probably in their 30s or 40s, have no concept of what Tick Tock is. And then you could, you could see in the background. Every once in a while there'd be this teenage girl or teenage boy in the background. And they're like, you know, I'll talk to this, I'll talk about this. They emerge from the bedrooms to become experts in their, in their, in their, in these grad courses. And so we're listening to them and it just, it's what's happening. It's like we have to remember that we're extending into their homes. And there's some really neat things around that. So one, we can use the expertise, we can use the context. If you see that I, you know, I have a guitar behind this, we can talk about guitars or whatever that might be, but there's all sorts of context clues that can get us a bit closer to their, to their world. And I think it's just this idea that there's a couple of things here going on we have to remember that we're in their spaces, that we can learn from their context, that there might be opportunities to actually learn differently than what we do in when we're just thinking about being placed in the institution. There's also some challenges. I remember teaching an undergraduate course a couple years ago, and one of my students, who's up to no good, decided to vape openly. So I'm in a zoom class. All of a sudden, one of the little squares is becoming a little smoky. He's vaping. And Jenny's just like blatantly blowing, you know, smoke, smoke rings into the. Into the camera. And I was thinking, like, I have no policy for this. I don't know his home. I don't know if he's vaping something legal or illegal, but he's vaping. And so right away I just said, hey, everyone, let's have a really unique challenge. So X is vaping over here. You know, you're all going to be teachers someday. So let's think about this new context. We're in very new ground here, and thank you for the opportunity to provide some, you know, to provide some policy or some insight into this. So we got into, you know, small groups and we just decided, like, what would you do if student, you know, did this in your class? In an online class? What are the. What can I do as a teacher? You know, and so we kind of went back and forth, and eventually students got to the point where, you know, it's not illegal and there's no policy around it. But, you know, we all have to act 247 as teachers and we have to present, you know, good digital identities or whatever it might have been. But it's just this idea that we're in a new space right now and we kind of have to abide by new rules or new set of rules. We have to think differently about when we're extending into student spaces. But we can also think opportunistically about how we can actually connect in really cool ways and how we can connect deeper to the people that are living in those homes and the people around them. So that's all I got to share, really, But I think. So what should people do?

Should they consciously establish a social contract? Should they write it into their syllabuses? What do you think they should do?

I mean, one of the things you can certainly do is when you're connecting to students at the beginning of the semester, it's like, pull something from your home. Tell me how unique it is. What's the story behind this. Tell me what's happening in your context. If people are willing to do that, share what's going on. At the same time, you can think about, I think Google or Meet, I think actually has a way of obscuring everything. Or I can go into my video and I could choose a virtual background. I can choose what's my interest. So I've got Star wars going on in the background, so I can do this sort of thing. So maybe I choose a background. If I'm using something like Zoom to kind of explain what I am, or if I want to be more comical, I can, you know, get myself into a meme or something here or whatever it might be between two ferns. I could do an interview. I can do whatever I want. So it's this idea of, you know, like, use this context, whether it's real or virtual, to establish some connection, even if it's a single artifact they pull out in the house. Let's try to find out what's going on in their students lives to understand their context. Because right now it's really, really important that we understand their context more than ever. Yeah.

And be patient with each other.

Yeah. Thanks, buddy. That's all I've got.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

I'm just.

The rest of you, thank you for joining in and we'll see you.