What is your virtual learning mission?
MISSION: Equity Exemplar
Engage
Tackling Racism: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our Schools and Universities. In these three interactive workshops from the Council of International Schools (CIS), you will join guest speakers and your peers from international schools and universities to collaborate and build your understanding of intercultural competence and its role in tackling racism and creating equity. Learn more. | Register.
Designing for Equity. The Global Online Academy (GOA) is offering a new course, Designing for Equity, which expands upon GOA’s previous professional learning courses, including our Designing for Online Learning series, and has been developed in response to growing needs for sustainable, culturally-responsive strategies across hybrid, in-person, and online K-12 models. This course is offered as a facilitated, discussion-based, asynchronous experience February 22 – 26. The course will then remain open until June 2021 so you can be “in” the course as your schedule permits. It is free for any and all educators. Learn more. | Register.
Mapping a Path to Culturally Responsive Leadership. Mapping a Path to Culturally Responsive Leadership. Inspired by Malcolm X’s words, “We can’t lead where we won’t go,” EduroLearning invites you to take a journey of self-discovery and engage in the inner work of personal transformation. As educators, we cannot expect our school communities to critically reflect on their biases if we don’t do so ourselves. Join Darnell Fine and Renee Green in February 2021 for this four-week facilitated learning experience. Open to all educators, $275. Learn more. | Register.
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Coaching for Equity.
Every child has a right to feel loved and cared for and to feel that they belong to a community. Emotional well-being is as important as academic success in my definition of educational equity.
Grades as the Gatekeeper to Privilege. Despite the initial purpose of grades being an assessment of learning, schools often use grades as a sorting mechanism within the school’s social structure. Read more about this important topic in this blog post. (4 minutes)
MISSION: IB Innovator
Engage
IB Webliography. The IB Webliography is a collaboration between the IB and IB Educators around the world to provide teachers with accessible, high quality, external resources to facilitate teaching and learning. Prior to being posted on the site, each resource is reviewed by an IB subject matter expert to ensure the content is strong and in line with IB curriculum and pedagogy.
Listen
Being Agile in Order to Move Forward. This IB blog post introduces six podcasts from IB World School leaders. In the IB Voices podcast, senior leadership teams from schools across Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific discuss various challenges faced by educators due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, how they reformed their how, where and what in terms of teaching and lessons that leadership teams can learn after enduring the challenges from the previous year.
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Supporting Metacognition. This blog post from the IB highlights research findings and recommendations to help schools build students’ metacognitive skills. The selection of findings is based on an extensive literature review from a policy paper called Making the abstract explicit: The role of metacognition in teaching and learning, which was commissioned by the IB Research department and conducted by Inflexion. (4 minutes)
MISSION: Microsoft Master
Learn and Earn
Designing for Learning: Math. Learn and explore with training and resources, and earn badges and certificates on a personalized hub created for educators like you. Browse the full catalog of Microsoft Educator Center training courses.
Office 365 Teacher Academy. Office 365 provides the right environment for better learning outcomes. In this learning path, educators will learn how to become more innovative with cloud-based tools, regardless of the device they use. In this course, learn how to use basic features of Office 365 including Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Sway, Microsoft Forms, Office Online and OneDrive. (12 hours)
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All About the Immersive Reader. The Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free tool, built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Office Lens, Microsoft Teams, Forms, Flipgrid, Minecraft Education Edition and the Edge browser, that implements proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability. Explore the extensive resources available from Microsoft to learn more about the Immersive Reader.
Schedule Assignments for the Future. In this quick instructional from Microsoft, learn how to schedule assignments for the future right now. Future You will appreciate your efficiency! (1 minute)
Watch
Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams. The long awaited breakout rooms feature has arrived! Break your meeting into multiple rooms and then later bring everyone back. Here is a detailed video to show you how! (~8 minutes)
MISSION: STEM Star
Learn and Earn
Designing for Learning: Math. Another great learning experience from the Global Online Academy (GOA)! Designed and facilitated by math teachers, for math teachers. Ideal for math departments or individual math educators teaching grades 5- 12 with concrete ideas for assessment, problem solving, and math practice in hybrid and online contexts. Approximately 3-5 hours total, asynchronously. March 1 – 5, 2020. $150 non-member schools. Learn more. | Register.
Designing for Learning: Science. Another great learning experience from the Global Online Academy (GOA)! Designed and facilitated by science teachers, for science teachers. Ideal for science departments or individual science teachers teaching grades 5-12 with specific ideas for assessment, scientific problem solving and labs, in hybrid and online contexts. Approximately 3-5 hours total, asynchronously. March 1 – 5, 2020. $150 non-member schools. Learn more. | Register.
MISSION: Virtual Learning Designer
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Avoiding Synchronous Video Fatigue. In this blog post, a school leader critically examines the very real feelings of the fatigue teachers and facilitators experience in virtual video environments. (3 minutes)
Competency-Based Learning. Learn more in this blog post from the Global Online Academy (GOA) about how competency-based learning can be a long-term teaching strategy for online and hybrid learning. (5 minutes)
The promise of CBL is to support student agency, sustain equitable practices, and promote transfer and authentic learning experiences.
High Quality Online Learning. In this blog post from the Global Online Learning Academy (GOA), learn more about the five norms and five rubrics for high-quality online learning.
Relationships in Online Learning. In this blog post from the Global Online Learning Academy (GOA), learn why and how we know that relationships are the foundation of online learning design. (4 minutes)
MISSION: Virtual Literacy Enthusiast
Read
Developing a ‘Language Profile’. In this blog post, learn how an IB World school introduced a language profile and the process of leading students in an inquiry into their individual language profiles. (4 minutes)
Virtual Book Clubs. An online book club organized by a teacher or school librarian can be a good way to foster social interactions during the pandemic. This blog post from edutopia provides some key how-tos to get started. (2 minutes)
MISSION: Virtual Learning Well-Being Wizard
Engage
Build SEL skills with Calm. Nearpod brings Calm into the classroom with 9 lessons that include guided meditations to help boost confidence, reduce stress and anxiety, and teach students the basics of mindfulness meditation for a happier, healthier life.
Stop, Breathe & Think. Stop, Breathe & Think is a free mindfulness and meditation app that allows users to check-in with how they are feeling and provides activities tuned in to their emotions. The app allows users to tune in to how they are thinking and feeling, and select emotions that guide them to recommended meditations. (~10 minutes)
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Feeling Socially Awkward? In this article from The New York Times, the author suggests that after months of limited mingling even extremely outgoing people may feel uncomfortable socializing, “like awkward eighth graders attending a school dance for the first time.” (7 minutes)
Jumping back into pleasant interactions can feel like returning from a year in the wilderness, a silent meditation retreat or outer space.
Stop Waiting for Things to Go ‘Back to Normal’. The author of this blog post encourages us to look at history to better understand (and accept?) the times we are living in. With some perspective comes the realization that within the full scope of history, even recent history, nothing about this moment is unusual. (4 minutes)
Approaching Teaching @ AISK 