My Favorite Sites for Distance Learning

While times are crazy and we have all had to jump into a distance learning situation, I have been trying to find some positivity and growth that can come out of this. I have rediscovered my love for so many online platforms I used previously in the classroom and have had the opportunity to share it with many teachers. I have been taking time to learn and grow more myself as well. I am so grateful for the team that I work with and the district I work for as well as the teachers I support and bounce ideas off of. I look forward to seeing more technology integration in the classroom and teacher expanding upon their newly gained knowledge from this time.

While there are so many amazing resources out there for teachers, and so many more that have opened up for free during this time, I have found sticking to a few resources is the most manageable. Most of these resources are ones I have used within my classroom and shared with students to use outside of the classroom. Even better, all of these resources are free, all of the time. The three I have chosen to highlight are Khan Academy, Google Slides and Open Middle.

Khan Academy is a well known website for tutorials on a variety of subjects including math and science as well as SAT prep. What I love about Khan academy is the ability to build classes and assign material to the students. You can assign videos, lessons, practice with immediate feedback, and even quizzes. Khan Academy keeps reports for you from grades on practice to the amount of time spent on assignments and allows students to retry their practice to increase their score and understanding. Another nice feature is when students are practicing and answer a question incorrectly a hint and/or a video is available to help them. The immediate feedback they receive is so important for distance learning or really any learning. Khan Academy will also recommend similar topics to students to “level up” their knowledge. Teachers have shared how helpful Khan Academy has been in assigning specific topics and are even utilizing it for course protection. I have used Khan Academy as an additional support for students as well as in class with students since it helps to provide differentiation and more personalized instruction.

A new favorite of mine is google slides. While I have used slides to build presentations for professional development and interactive reviews, I have not used them for individual responses from students on topics. I have been inspired by a few people in my district to further utilize google slides in different capacities. During this distance learning it is so important to be checking in on students and fellow colleagues so I thought about creating interactive “check ins” through google slides. The slides can be shared through google classroom and each student can comfortably sharing their response without other students seeing it. I also included reflection slides to be used at the end of a lesson, where students individually drag an image or type in response to a prompt such as “how was math today?”

Another way to utilize google slides is to create interactive practice or review that gives students immediate feedback and extra hints or reminders when needed. Since the lessons we have created included a small number of practice problems, I felt turning those problems interactive would be more impactful. Students solve a problem and select their answer choice which prompts to either a correct slide or a hint or video slide and asks them to try again. Google slides allows you to link to other slides in the presentation in order to make this interaction possible. In conversations with a teacher, we are developing a way to use these interactive practices as TEKS based interventions for students and menus for students to select their review. I love the ideas and extensions into future school years that are coming out of distance learning!

From the first week of distance learning, teachers were sharing that students were seeking more work than what was expected. Open Middle was the first website I thought of to share as an extension or non-required work that would keep students occupied and thinking deeply for some time. Open middle problems have a closed beginning and end, meaning they start with the same problem and most end with the same solution, but an open middle. An open middle means there are multiple strategies and approaches to solve the problem. Most problems take several attempts and students end up working more problems to find the optimal solution than they would on a typical worksheet. Open middle can be done in a digital setting as well, such as pear deck, geogebra, or even google jamboard. What I love about open middle is you can really see student misconceptions come out while they are engaged in these problems. Some problems have multiple solutions while others ask for the highest or lowest possible solution. Students have shared how much they loved class when we worked on open middle problems.

While there are times of added stress and strain, this distance learning is also providing many opportunities for students and in education that may not have felt so important before. I am excited for the future years and planning ways to continue many practices teachers have started during these last few weeks. While there are many other great digital resources out there, I found these sites have been my most frequented lately. I would love to hear what you are finding yourself gravitating towards!