I've been thinking a bit about the collective panic many folks experienced with Zoom's outage yesterday. Understandably, it's stressful when infrastructures that we rely upon fail! The problem is that we're still relying upon thinking of Zoom as the classroom. It's not. (1/x)
Zoom is part of the classroom. Think of it as the table where everyone gathers around or the small tables for breakout rooms. To run a successful class, you would never just rely upon the furniture in your f2f classroom. You likely had handouts, books, videos, resources. (2/x)
Sure, the furniture shaped what kinds of interactions were possible f2f, just as Zoom shapes the interactions possible online. But teachers have long found creative workarounds for chairs mounted in the ground. If we can bring that same spirit of experimentation to online.. (3/x)
... We develop flexible pedagogies that help students become aware of space. Does it suck that Zoom went down on the very first day of class for many? Yes! But we are living in an unstable world, & w/ climate crisis on the horizon, this is just the beginning of instability (4/x)
So, I'll say it again: Zoom is not your classroom. It takes a lot of time and energy to design a space that goes beyond Zoom. I get that. But part of being flexible and making sure content & interactions are available to students is by reconceptualizing the classroom itself (5/x)
What interactions are, ultimately, at the core of your class? What kinds of activities? How do you make those available when one tech, one infrastructure (inevitably) fails? This is not a skill that will be limited to teaching online either. And I get that this is HARD. (6/x)
There's a lot I'm constantly learning about effective teaching and learning, but if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that if we lean too heavily on one space or one set of tools, we ratchet up the anxieties more for everyone. And that's the last thing we need.
