Classroom management

    I was really struck the other day by how different classroom management is online and face-to-face.  Some of the issues that are constant F2F simply don’t happen online. 

    For one thing, while online at home, students do the work (or not, as they sometimes choose), and then move on to Facebook, games, or whatever else they need/want to do.  F2F – and here I include the computer lab – is a whole ‘nother thing. 

    Whenever the kids are really in front of me, I have to consider the different paces they work at – speedy (but not necessarily well done), focused, highly distractible, and all the places in between.  Some kids finish early and I need to have something constructive for them to do so they don’t distract the rest of the class.  On the other hand, some kids won’t make it through the work by the end of class.  This means that I quickly have students working (or not working) on different things simultaneously. 

    This became so clear to me in my high school tech/computer skills class, where students are simultaneously F2F and on the class moodle.  Unlike in my blended middle school classes, where most of the online work is done outside of school, this class is all in front of me in real time.  Using the moodle to organize and present the work has been a God-send, but I need to plan for a wide variety of both focus and skill. 

    When students are mostly online, keeping them on task is a different equation.  I don’t really care what other things they are doing (and yes, I know they have multiple browser windows open) as long as they are engaged in work for my class.  When finished, they move on and that doesn’t matter to me.  F2F, though, I’ve got to keep the three-ring circus running, which takes extra planning. 

    The extra planning is especially needed because I’ve discovered how useful it is to have a written agenda:  this is what we are doing today, and when you finish, here are your alternatives.  I do find myself tweaking the agenda, and I need to modify it several times a week as we move to new work.  But the agenda is clear.  I get fewer of those annoying “what are we doing again?” questions (you know, the ones that mean the student can’t be bothered to pay attention until the rest of the class has started working). 

    Also, I’ve noticed that students are more on task.  In addition, this makes them less dependent on me, so I can focus on who needs help, not on directing traffic. 

    Kids actually read the agenda online, whereas they ignore the same agenda written on the white board.  Go figure.

What are we doing again?

    A key problem when working with kids online/blended is communicating what you want them to do.  In K12, the traditional online tools don’t work as I would like.    


    Most Course Management Systems like Moodle have some sort of course news feature.  With Moodle, the news is the first module at the top of the stack of modules.  But it doesn’t show the actual news, unfortunately, just the link to the forum that holds the news. It takes 2 clicks to get to content.

    D2L, another CMS, puts the actual news right there for students to see as soon as they open the course.  The downside of this is that students must then navigate someplace else for discussions, course content, uploading assignments, and so on.  With Moodle, all of that can be in one central spot (great for focusing distractible kids).

    But my kids never ever read the course news.  Ever.  They would look at me and ask, “What are we doing?”  Fortunately this happened in the computer lab so I could learn right away that putting news in the course news was pointless.

    I’ve made course news invisible so it isn’t cluttering up what student see, and I’ve added a label with Directions: and a short, numbered list which is the first thing students see.  This agenda, like the sample shown, tells students what they need to get started. 

    Now, I put what I want my students to see front and center.  Zero ambiguity.  This is extra work for me (and there are definitely days when I think wistfully about D2L’s news function), but my students focus, so it’s worth it.