Hi everyone welcome to DocsTeach for Virtual Learning:
How to Lead a DocsTeach Activity Remotely.
This is our third webinar in our series. If you are new to DocsTeach
or this this webinar series I just want to point out a couple of resources where
you can get started on our docsteach.org home page. If you go to menu,
resources, we've got a link called getting started that will walk you
through what this site does, what this site is, and everything it can
do. You can also access previous webinar recordings under
webinars, recorded webinars, so definitely check those resources out later.
Now my goal for today's session is to give you new ideas for how to use DocsTeach
in a virtual class meeting. We know there are many web conferencing
tools out there so we'll try to stick to general recommendations that will
hopefully work across many platforms today.
On DocsTeach we have 12 different activity tools that can be used for
class discussions or student assignments, you can see the overview of those
activity tools under activity tools, all tools, and
some of these tools, particularly the analyzing documents, the focusing on
details series, will work well in a virtual class
discussion, especially when they're featuring images or
or posters. So I have a few activities that I've pulled together
under my account, my activities, that I want to share with you today
and walk through how you might be able to share these with your students.
So we are going to start with the White Out/Black Out activity.
So when we open this link we are taken to
the teacher page, again this has everything you need
to share this activity with your students including background
information for you, additional resources, an overview of the
activity, you can find it here. Now with this White Out/Black Out
activity you can obscure information on a primary source so that students then
need to use context clues to hypothesize what is happening or what is being
described in the document. It's a really easy activity to put
together and it'll help your students practice document analysis skills,
use those context clues to form hypotheses, and use primary sources as
historical evidence. So in this particular tool students are
going to examine a diagram of the bus in which Rosa Parks took a seat her name
has been obscured from this document so they're
going to have to analyze the document, share what they observe, to try to make a
hypothesis about what story this record connects to.
We're going to go ahead and click start activity
on this page this takes us to the student url, This is the page that you
want to share with your students to lead the activity.
Now if you're like me and oftentimes have
20 tabs open or 20 windows open you may want to open this student page
as a new window. Then when you share your screen
you can just share this window with the student DocsTeach activity
and toggle back and forth between your shared window
and your web conferencing tool or your teacher notes using,
depending what system you're using, right, the alt tab key or or the mission
control key. Some web conferencing systems right
will allow you to share your screen while also having access to
that chat function, those interactive tools
so whichever makes the most sense for the tool you're using.
And then as you share your screen with your students
you can use this activity to ask your students questions right we
have these discussion questions, and prompts built into this
activity, when you're done has some wrap-up
questions that you can share with your students to
to consider. You can use these discussion
questions to guide your conversation with students around this primary source.
There are a couple of ways you can have students share their responses ,right, if
your tool has a chat function you can just
ask students to type their responses in and you can read them out loud as they
come in or if you've got a hand raising tool, right, you could ask
students to raise their hand if they want to share their hypothesis about
what document or what story this document connects to,
by asking students to raise their hand and calling on raised hands to unmute
to share their responses. I've also seen it done where you can have students
in the chat function chat their name and then you know who to call on to unmute,
so there are a couple of different ways you can get students to share their
ideas about what they're seeing in this document. But we've got a lot of,
we've got a document here that we can really practice those
right, those visual analysis strategies get students to
take a look at what's happening here form that hypothesis
and then we can click view entire document to see the document,
the original document as is. So you can absolutely use this
White Out/Black Out tool to share in a in a virtual class meeting
a visual documents that are really have a lot of visuals photographs posters
could work really well. And again to get to this student page we
started with the my activity, you can find this activity by searching
your activities, you can always start to find new activities in that activity
search button from the home page, and when you find an activity it first
takes you to that teacher page again this is all the information you need
to facilitate this activity, in fact you could even have the teacher page open as
you share the student page on your screen to refer
to, and clicking that start activity is what
takes us to that student page, the page we're going to want to share
with our students as we lead this virtual discussion.
Now you could absolutely share a DocsTeach activity that
uses textual documents they're just a couple of modifications you might want
to make. So for example, we're going to look at this activity
that I've already searched for and saved in my activities,
that is two versions of FDR's infamy speech.
So in this activity students are comparing the changes between a draft of
FDR's december 8th speech and the final version.
When we click start activity we are taken to those two versions that
we can toggle back and forth between since we are
dealing with a lot more text it may be helpful to take this unique student url
share this directly in the chat for students to open
as they analyze these documents and give some time for students to work their way
through this text. Or, prior to your virtual meeting you
could share this student url with your students
in advance and they could open this up walk through these discussion questions
jot down a couple of notes in advance of their class discussion.
You can also on the teacher version of the page here,
if you scroll down to the bottom you are always going to find links
to the documents used in the activity you could even share these links
directly with students whether it's via the chat
or via you know, email or your lms, prior to the discussion
students could open up these two documents to look at
and respond to during your virtual class discussion.
As you share the student activity page which again we can get to you by from
the teacher page, clicking start activity, when you share your screen you're going
to want to make sure you are sharing this window with your students because
this walks through the student presentation of the activity.
All right so I'm going to close a couple of these windows here
and walk you through a couple more examples of how you could share a DocsTeach
activity during a virtual class discussion.
One other thing I want to point out is that if you need
for any reason, a pdf version of the activity to share with your students or
want to share something with your students that
they're able to print or if you want to print anything
from the teacher page of the activity you're going to want to use that printer
icon, because this is going to open up a
printer friendly version of your activity which then you can then
print the full student activity directly or
you could even save it as a pdf and then email that or share it with
your students in another way if it's going to be helpful to have access to
something that is printable. You're going to want to print it from
the teacher page versus the student page because this,
because this printer icon is going to give you access to that printer friendly
version of the activity.
All right let's go back to my activities, I've bookmarked another type of
activity here that i want to share that might work well
for a remote learning session. This is an activity that uses our interpreting data
tool. So the interpreting data tool can be
used in many different ways. In this particular activity we are
asking students to analyze a political cartoon and
identify artistic techniques the artist is doing,
they're going to add little text bubbles to the cartoon
where they find these techniques in play.
So again if I was leading a virtual class session with my students
through whichever distance learning platform you're using, first you're going
to want to click start activity because this is our unique
student, or this is our student url this is our student friendly version
of this activity, share your screen of the student activity so we can all
look at this cartoon together. And then the activity has students think about
these different artistic techniques in
political cartoons and asks them to identify where they
find these and explain why they're identifying right this
personification this, this particular symbol.
And as they look at this activity you could ask students to share
which symbols they are finding and then you could add the text by clicking add
text, and typing in the identifier right, the
the rifle is a symbol of you know the mobilization at the Polish
border, save that that note is going to show up
on the cartoon. You could also, if you are using a web
conferencing tool that has an annotation feature you
could have students annotate this document with you,
identifying these different artistic techniques, so whether they, they could
raise their hand and you could call on volunteers to identify an artistic
technique but then also explain the why, what they think,
how this art technique is being used and then you can use these uh when you're
done questions to wrap up the class
discussion with students responding in the chat box or or being called on
to unmute and share their responses.
So here we have just three examples of DocsTeach activities that are going to
lend themselves well to a virtual class session that you can
lead a conversation around by sharing your screen, showing this student
link, and having students participate whether
it's through chat or unmuting their microphones
to to respond and contribute to this conversation.
whichever classroom manage, virtual classmate
classroom management strategy or makes sense to you.
Now many of our activity tools as we mentioned especially the ones that
use multiple primary sources may work best as assigned to students
to complete as an assignment. However a couple of these
might be useful to share your screen and do a review session of during an actual
virtual session. So the next tool I wanted to spotlight
today of how you could use that is the Weighing the Evidence tool.
So I'm going to open this Weighing the Evidence tool, we're looking at
one that is going ,students are going to analyze different documents and
determine whether they show a separation of powers or the
concept of shared powers. So in the Weighing the
Evidence tool students analyze different primary sources and
place them on a scale to show which interpretation they think
the evidence supports now with Weighing the Evidence, unlike
your Finding a Sequence, our Finding a Sequence Tool,
or our Seeing the Big Picture tool where there's going to be a set answer,
students answers may vary on where they've placed
these pieces of evidence on the scale so this might be a good activity to share
and conduct a review of after students have completed
it in advance. So again I'm going to click start activity,
to get to that student page you could assign this as an assignment to your
students by sharing this link at the top if you
are using google classroom you can use the google classroom icon to set it up
as an assignment if you're using another lms just simply
copy and paste the student's url into that lms to set up that assignment.
As students analyze these documents they
can see the full version, assess the text, return
to the activity and determine if they are seeing
separation of powers or shared powers, our two interpretations
in this activity and then actually load the scale
and then when they're done they can after they've analyzed all the
documents they can submit their answers to the wrap-up question and
again for students to submit their responses
in DocsTeach they would just type in their name
they would type in your email address associated with your account
and then enter their response and submit this activity.
Now if your students are, if you're using an lms,
students don't need to type in your email address associated with your DocsTeach
account all they have to do is click
send response this generates a unique url
at the top here that they can submit using the google classroom link or copy
and paste into your other lms system they can also
bookmark this for reference during your class discussion and we can see we've
got how the student has answered the
this activity in the snapshot here. Going back right, the next day during the
class discussion you can go ahead and click start
activity share this screen and ask students to share how they,
where they place these documents on this scale.
You could even create as you look at the documents a poll
if this is a feature in your distance learning tool
and have students respond whether it's interpretation 1 or interpretation 2
as you look at each document, and then ask students to share, make the
case for why they place that document in that
interpretation and so this is a good way you could use this to
get a review going to get a healthy debate going because not
only are, can these primary sources be placed
to support two different interpretations students responses to where they place
them on the scale may also be different which could lend itself well
to a healthy class discussion. So whether you are sharing a new
activity for the first time with your students as
a class discussion or using one of these tools to review
your students work there are a lot of ways you can
incorporate a DocsTeach activity into your virtual class
session this year and the same, these same techniques can also be used whether
if you're projecting these activities on a projector and
sharing them to the class you can use them in the classroom
as well. So that this is again just a handful of examples we'd love to hear
from you how you're using these tools this year you can always reach out to us
using the contact us button or uh tell us how you're using
Docsteach on twitter we are @DocsTeach