Three Free Webinars About Transitioning to Teaching Online

In my previous post I mentioned Rushton Hurley's Emergencies and Switching to Online Learning. Later this week Rushton is going to host three free webinars on the topic. The webinars are Wednesday at 4pm ET and 7pm ET and then again on Friday at 4pm ET. You can register for the webinars here.

In describing the webinars Rushton wrote, "This program is not a simple collection of web-based tech tools, but rather one which will focus on how to help prepare your team in this difficult time."

Rushton will be using Zoom to host the webinars so this is a good opportunity to see Zoom in action from the viewer/ student perspective. I demonstrated the presenter's perspective in this video.

Two More Guides to Transitioning to Online Instruction

Last week and again this morning I published my top tips and tools for teaching remotely if your school closes due to COVID-19 outbreak. And as I mentioned on my podcast, Larry Ferlazzo has a good list of resources going too. Now there are two more guides that I'd like to draw your attention to.

Rushton Hurley is the founder of Next Vista for Learning, a video sharing site that I've featured dozens (hundreds?) of times over the years on this blog and in my workshops. Before focusing on Next Vista Rushton was the principal of an online school in Texas. He has published Emergencies and Switching to Online Learning. In that guide Rushton outlines how to try to maintain continuity in making the switch to online classrooms and recommends a series of free and low-cost tools to make the switch. What I like about his guide is that many of the tools he mentions are ones that are already popular in classrooms, he just does a good job of framing their use in context of making a quick transition to online classrooms. (One quick logistical note about Rushton's guide, the links for each section of the guide are in the upper-right corner of the guide's landing page. They might not jump out at you if you're on a tablet or phone).

Kathleen Morris at The Edublogger (an Edublogs blog) has assembled an extensive guide to teaching online. What I like about Kathleen's guide is that she specifically addresses the needs of elementary school students and teachers whereas Rushton and I didn't do that in our guides. Kathleen's guide also provides some great tips on how to structure the school day if you have to move to teaching online.