As 2020 draws to an end, millions of teachers and students worldwide are at the end of their first full semester of distance learning, which is also the middle of the 2020-2021 school year. Although the physical in-person school year ended in March, many districts decided to only offer enrichment activities for students from March 16 till the end of the 2019-2020 academic school year. Many teachers, students, and families did not feel the gravity of distance education until the fall of 2020.
From lack of computer skills of both educators and students alike, multiple educational platforms, slow district response, and families without proper technical support or internet connections, the fall has been a difficult semester to navigate, yet somehow we all made it through with a huge heaping of grace.
During this semester I taught five classes of Biology completely online. I quickly found that my technical skills were great for in-person instruction, but severely lacking for online platforms. I had become accustomed to using educational sites such as Socrative, Schoology, and PhetScience simulations in the past. However, not being with my students in person made things much more difficult than I had imagined. I also found myself inundated with new online platforms that I had to quickly how to use them enough to not only instruct my students but to ensure they were relevant to the curriculum. So this semester I have scrambled to use Google classroom while incorporating Edpuzzle, Nearpod, and Pivot. Over the course of the semester, there are things I love about the platforms and things that I have found cumbersome. As a parent, I have worked with my children on their Google classroom sites, Powerschool, Odysseyware, Edgenuity, Kahoot, and many more that I have not remembered offhand. this is where distance learning has definitely became an overwhelming phenomenon, so many sites to use
