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I have a number of regular weekly features (see HERE IS A LIST (WITH LINKS) OF ALL MY REGULAR WEEKLY FEATURES).

This is a relatively new addition to that list.

Some of these resources will be added to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions! and the best will go to The “Best Of The Best” Resources To Support Teachers Dealing With School Closures.

Here are this week’s choices:

The Ups and Downs of Zoom Breakout Rooms is by Sarah Cooper.

School Attendance In The COVID Era: What Counts As ‘Present’? is from NPR.

Jen Serravallo: Let Go and Gain Engagement! appeared in Middleweb.

A cyberpsychologist explains why you can’t stop staring at yourself on Zoom calls (and everyone else is probably doing the same) is from Insider, and offers one reason why we many of us are experiencing challenges encouraging students to turn their cameras on:

“A lot of adolescents deal with something called the imaginary audience, this belief in their minds that individuals around them are really paying attention to every move they make,” said Franklin.

Video is not always effective in science communication is from Eureka Alert. Basically, the study gave audiences two ways to learn a topic – through a two-and-a-half minute video or through viewing a twelve-to-twenty-three slide slideshow. The slideshows engaged participants much more than the video. However, it seems to me like a not very well-designed study because it let viewers go back and review slides, but they couldn’t do the same with the video!

So, I think the study itself a pretty useless for teachers to learn from, but it does give me an opportunity to say that I post the short slideshows I use after each class in Google Classroom and not videos. I don’t apply good design ideas in the slideshow (they have a fair amount of text and few visuals) and, instead make them so if a student is not there he/she can get a pretty good idea of what we did. I’m doing this for a few reasons:

* I don’t think many students would watch a video of our Zoom class

* I originally thought I’d make a two minute video using the slideshow after each class, but distance learning is already killing me with the number of hours I’m having to work, and I just can’t add any more tasks.

* Students tell me they like the slideshows because they can go through them very quickly.

* Making the slideshows so that they students know what we’ve done by just reading them helps me during class because it functions as my “script” during the actual class. Yes, I know we’re not supposed to repeat what’s on the slide. But I don’t do a whole lot of full-class instruction (most of the class is in breakout rooms or, when we’re together, students are sharing), so I’m not really talking that much.

David Deubelbeiss shared this video: