I am no expert in either hybrid nor online teaching. That said, it is March in the year 2020 and COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) is running rampant across the world in an unprecedented pandemic. It has forced many K-12 schools to close and many colleges and universities to push their classes online.
For the past few years now, I have been experimenting with various forms of technology to streamline the teaching and learning process. I’ve learned to use the iPad with various apps to both grade assignments and exams and to also connect with my students in a variety of virtual environments.
Such tinkering has led me to using Microsoft OneNote as a decent half-way replacement of Blackboard. I plan on learning about Microsoft Teams with the intention of completely abandoning Blackboard.
And, ironically, all of this tinkering and making my classroom half online/half in-person has prepared me for MSU Denver pushing all classrooms online for the remainder of the Spring 2020 Semester. More importantly, it’s put me in a unique position of actually having some idea of what I’m doing and capable of sharing that with others.
More information is provided in the blog posts, but basically, I use the following apps (in no particular order), not necessarily all at once, but all at some point in teaching and delivering material to my students:
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- iPad
- Native screen recording on the iPad
- Notability for the iPad
- Explain Everything
- Desmos.com (and the app form of Desmos for the iPad)
- GeoGebra
- Piazza.com
- Zoom (for video office hours)
- Microsoft OneNote Classroom Notebook
- Blackboard (minimally, but it has its uses)
- (soon) Canvas (yay?)
- YouTube
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