The Challenges of Online Teaching!

What are some of the major problems that we face while teaching online?

We have all recently challenged by the online teaching without having any previous idea about it. We have faced, and we are still facing many issues. Here are some the major problems that we face while teaching online.

One of the most important issues is student's engagement. In most of the cases, online sessions are actually a lecture session that will end up by the teacher being talking to a screen. One of the things that can be done is to design the lecture in a way that involved student's more like asking challenging questions that elicit curiosity and thinking in the students or get the working in teams to let them think and work together in breakout rooms. Student's involvement is essential in online learning and to make sure that they are engaged together and with us as teachers.

Students' participation in online classes has high importance. But, how can we assess their participation and add it to their final grades? In fact, participation includes the quality of the answers students share while attending online sessions, listening to their classmates and building up or correcting their ideas, and the posts they do while answering a given question. These are things that can be taken into consideration when grading student's participation activities. 

Another challenge that we face in online teaching is giving differentiated instructions for students of different learning abilities and interests. We need to make sure that the students who struggle capturing the content and who move at slower rates are also involved in the learning process. One thing that can be done is to dedicate a part of the break or free time that we have to follow up with low achievers and answer their inquiries or give them extra work to solve. It is very important to reach out for passive learners through our differentiated instructions while teaching online to make a huge difference in the life of our diverse classes. 

A third problem that come along with online teaching is the amount of posts, messages, emails, and activities that are given to students. It is very difficult to read all of them and respond to every single student. As teachers, we can set a rule and make them clear for students regarding how, what, and when they can send us inquiries and make assignments clear as much as possible to avoid any misunderstanding. We should take into account how to improve our communication and ways of responses to students as we tend to be their models. 

Giving feedback for student's work might take weeks and this is not what students actually expect when it is related to online learning. Our feedbacks play and essential role in students improvement as they should be done in way that should push students to learn carefully from their mistakes after doing an assignment or activity and how to improve themselves. Feedbacks should be personalized, students feel their importance to us when we do so, and they will be able to respond in their own way to our feedbacks as well.

At the end, it is important to keep in mind that whether it is face-to-face or online teaching, it is supposed to be fun for students as well us for us as teachers! Being ourselves, letting students to express themselves as well, and interacting with them give energy and life to the class and will make us all satisfied with the outcomes!

Online Safety Rules: Tips for Students for Safe Web Surfing!

What should be done to help students stay safe while being online?

We spend a lot of time on the internet doing multiple of online tasks from searching new information, making presentations and school projects, virtual classes and meetings, checking trending videos, playing online games, to simple chatting and sending pictures to friends. Billions of people use the internet and not all of them are  aware of problems that may arise while doing so. Kids and teen are much more likely to be subjected to hackers or even verbal or physical harassment and bullying while being online. Here are some tips that we should teach students at such ages to avoid falling into such problems. 

The first thing that students should know about internet safety is that whatever posted on the internet will stay there forever! Your grandchildren will be able at some stage to read your posts and thoughts! So, when dealing with social media, it is necessary to follow up with the privacy terms they apply. 

The second thing to be taken into consideration is to avoid putting lots of personal information out there and only share what is required with friends. If not, then this causes the accounts to be subjected to attackers and hackers who would take advantage of you. 

A third thing is to not forget about smart phone's safety. Cyber safety should extend to your phones as well when it comes to text safety the same way our parents used to tell us to never accept any candies or gifts or even respond to strangers. So, they should be taught to not answer texts or cell phones from strange or unknown numbers. They should also know to stop communicating with someone who doesn't make them feel comfortable and never be afraid or shy to speak outload with their parents, school councillors, teachers, or other trusted adults about any out-of-normal incidents like bullying, verbal or sexual harassment. Moreover, they shall not meet in person with someone they have already known online unless they take a friend with them a sit in public places. 

Now, being a part of the worldwide web, one should know how to handle hackers in an intelligent way and this would be the fourth thing to be taken into account. A bunch of things can be done relating to the previously mentioned idea. One should know very well that no mater how careful you might be, still your accounts can get hacked! To ensure safety, one can simply change the account's password when it gets hacked and make a new stronger and unpredictable one. In addition, there is always the option of using the two-step verification or using many emails to protect your account. One can also tell friends to report or block hacked accounts, use software to detect viruses, and most importantly to back up important files so that they would never be lost. 

The internet can be a wonderful world to explore but one should always make sure how to stay safe and teach students how to properly act while surfing it. 

Concept Mapping: Definition, Elements, Steps, Uses in Education!

 A Simple Guide to Create and Use Concept Maps: Science Example!

Definition and Importance

When thinking about a certain concept, lots of ideas may come to our mind and may form a mess after a while making it difficult to grasp the main point or details about it. That's where a concept mapping comes in. 

A concept map is a visual way to organize your ideas and make connections between them as well. They improve our ability to understand and remember concepts because our brains process visuals more than texts. 

Elements

A concept map is made up of three basic elements:

• Shapes: representing concepts or ideas (rectangles or ovals).
• Arrows: showing the relationship between concepts. 
• Text: identifying the concepts and relationships. 

How to create a concept map?

1. Topic Identification + Focus question: The first step in creating a concept map is to identify the main concept or the subject of study. For example, I tried to map some of the thing that I know about the immune system. So, I drew a rectangle and wrote within it 'Immune System'. The main idea should be located at the top of the map as everything we write down falls under this main topic. One would say: 'But, I know lots of things about the Immune System!' like history of discovery, structure, function, and disorders. So, a concept map holding all of these information may become messy and hence unuseful. Therefore, it would be much better to focus on one 'Focal question' to specify the issue this concept map will be talking about. In this example, the focus question can be: What are the main types of Immune responses? 
2. Brainstorming: Now, we can start adding any related concept. They should be as brief as possible to avoid having a text-crowded concept map with less visual effects. In our example, we can use names of responses, cells, and organs. 
3. Drawing the map: The concepts should be arranged in a hierarchal format. The map should start with the main concept at the top and then end up with more specific concepts as we move down. The specific and non-specific immune responses are the broadest, so I put them under the main topic.
4. Connecting ideas: To show relationships between ideas, we draw arrows between them with a text that defines this relationship. It is better to use verbs to link concept together and use simple phrases as we move down the map. This is called a 'Proposition' So, when your map is finished, you'll have a set of propositions about a given topic. You may also create cross-links between  ideas to show how they are related together. 
5. Refining the map: Finally, you can add colours to organize ideas and review review the make to make sure of proper connections and probably add some more.

Uses in Education

In education, concept maps can be used as:

• Learning tool: as a visual presentation tool, while brainstorming, making outlines, or testing the knowledge of students. It is an effective tool for students to build on previous knowledge and create connections between newly learned and previously learned ideas.     
• Evaluation tool: to access students' understanding for a given topic and enhance their critical thinking skills while making connections between ideas. 

To create your own Concept maps

www.lucidchart.com is a site that I have used to make my own maps after creating an account or you may find templates for free on the internet! 

Enjoy mapping your lessons!