Episode 054: Coping with Covid, with Catlin Tucker

As we all try to wrap our heads around the implications the pandemic will have on our students, our communities, our families, and ourselves, we hope to provide some comforting guidance from an expert in remote learning. Catlin Tucker, whose original Vrain Waves interview aired back in Season 2 about her book Power Up Blended Learning, joins us again for a Sunday discussion about how we can approach these changes to our instruction. 

Connect with Catlin Tucker

Website: https://catlintucker.com | Twitter: @catlin_tucker | Most Recent Book: Balance with Blended Learning

Connect with Vrain Waves

Website: vrainwaves.com | Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb

• Intro 
  • Episode 053 with Dr. Todd Rose
  • Poem: Pandemic, by Lynn Ungar
  • https://www.createtocope.com/: “Creativity is the pathway towards healing.”
  • Washington Post Simulation article
  • Lenin quote: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” 
  • Episode 045 with Dr. Jim Afremow
  • Episode 020 with Catlin Tucker
• Start of Interview (10:07) 
• Setting schedules at home (12:00)
  • Catlin’s blog with family schedule
  • Security and routine at home 
• Fitting into family schedules (14:52) 
  • Schoology, Canvas, Google Classroom
  • Virtual Office Hours
  • Remind
• Timing & Moving classes online (17:46) 
  • Retrieval
  • Pieces of our lessons can live online -- decide which ones work for you 
  • Work backwards from your objectives
  • Add collaborative opportunities for students to engage with each other 
• Combating Social Isolation (20:27) 
  • Catlin’s Blog Post
  • Community of Inquiry Framework -- Teaching Presence, Cognitive Presence, Social Presence 
  • Informal conversations for development 
  • Stronger sense of social presence = better outcomes for online learning
  • Google Slides Discussions 
  • Less is more, take new learning slow
• Tenets of Online Learning (24:48)
  • Backwards design stands true
  • What artifacts do I need for assessment? 
  • Which instructional strategies will work for this outcome? 
  • Many tools have more capacity than we even know about -- dig into the tools you already know 
  • Screencastify
• Where should we be spending our energy? (27:15) 
  • Video instruction on concepts & new information, model processes, and move students forward
  • Online discussions are a must 
  • Catlin’s Doctoral Work
  • Power Up Blended Learning
  • Vocabulary.com; NoRedInk
• Online discussions (32:34) 
  • Catchy title as a hook 
  • Layer your questions
  • Media is a must
  • Give students ideas for discussion responses (give a compliment, a recommendation, etc)
  • Ladder of Feedback (Clarity, Value, Concerns, Suggestions) 
  • Online discussion tags on Catlin’s blog; [EduCause tips for online discussions]
• Empowering students to help us redesign the remainder of the school year (35:41) 
  • Ask for student feedback
• Filtering through all of these ed tech resources (38:17) 
  • Think big but start small
  • Find your pedagogical challenge and then find the tool to address that challenge
  • Kami for annotation
  • Don’t overestimate your students’ readiness to access tools for learning online
  • Codex.svvsd.org
  • The Balance, episode with Jason Green
• Balance with Blended Learning
• Ben & Becky’s Takeaways (47:12) 
  • Catlin’s home schedule for her kids during isolation
  • Jennifer Gonzalez’s Wakelet for isolation | Get on her mailing list
  • Dr. Bruce Perry