Looking back now on five years of using SI leaders, I know I will never go back. Why? Grades are up, and so is retention, but I would really never go back to being that solo teacher in the front of the classroom. I prefer the noisy, happy, imperfect collaboration of working with SI Leaders who are closer in age and experience, and digital footprint to my students.
Discord is a community-based platform that can be used to encourage organic interactions amongst students in a virtual environment. This post discusses how Discord can foster an online community, whether you’re teaching online or in-person.
The overlapping crises of public health and police brutality prompted me to think about trauma-informed pedagogy as a way to both grieve the losses and celebrate resilience. The collaborative project, “From Pandemic to Protest: We Remember,” was designed to provide students with an opportunity to reflect on the events of 2020-2021, using digital tools to commemorate the experiences of their communities during the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial-justice protests.
During this time of so much stress and change, it’s great to have a quick game to get your students laughing and energized. I’m going to recommend two of my favorite quick, no-cost games: Powerpoint Jeopardy and Mad Libs.
Ultimately, I want students to walk away from my class having had a positive experience in which they have learned things that stick with them on some level. My experimentation with ungrading is helping me and the students I teach shift our thinking away from grading toward learning.
In our early childhood curriculum classes, pre-service teachers engage in collaborative hands-on learning experiences with dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. Our classroom is stocked with materials to inspire creativity and exploration. How to translate that to a remote learning environment?
In the first insallment of this blog post, we introduced the Makerspace community and showcased the ways in which students and faculty have been using the BMCC Makerspace. In this second installment, we introduce the online BMCC Makerspace resources and highlight some activities that can be done at home using commonly available materials.
Did you know that BMCC has a Makerspace available to all faculty and students? A Makerspace is a place meant to encourage people to create, experiment, and develop ideas. Makerspaces are part research lab, part classroom, part studio, and provide tools and lessons on how to use them. Read on to find out how this space can be used in classes across disciplines.
Like most faculty at BMCC, I was a newbie to synchronous online teaching when classes suddenly went remote last March and had little idea how to “Zoomify” my Spanish classes. Thanks to the hive mind of the Internet, YouTube, and my BMCC colleagues, I’ve learned a few ways to push back against the virtual “wall” of Zoom so that more student-to-student exchanges can occur.
In this video tour of her class, Christina talks about how she builds community and helps students be successful in a completely asynchronous class taught in Blackboard and the OpenLab.
