Ronnie Seneque’s Tips on Remote Teaching
This article is the second in a series of articles we’ll be writing summarizing our 10h livestream on April 1st. If you want to hear all of what Ronnnie had to say, check out the full video here.
Ronnie Seneque is a 16-year veteran math teacher at Kramer Middle School in Washington DC who has been encouraging teachers to go digital for 7(!) years. Ronnie spent almost an hour on our marathon livestream to tell us all about how he uses Explain Everything Whiteboard to teach math to middle schoolers, and we were so impressed by his fantastic enthusiasm and creativity!
Take a look at some of his tips on how to use Explain Everything Whiteboard to teach remotely effectively.
- Students learn more from you as a person, so don’t worry too much about polishing your videos. Editing out a sudden loud noise that happened while you were recording a video is fine, but don’t sweat getting things perfect too much. Getting remote teaching right is so much more about the personal connection you have with your students!
- Use 2 devices to see the kids and while preventing distraction. Ronnie likes to use both his tablet and his desktop during a lesson. Why? He streams the content of his whiteboard from his tablet, and that’s all the students see – no distractions! His desktop he uses to watch the kids’ faces as he explains different concepts to them, as well as monitor the chat for questions and comments. This also means that the chat is effectively hidden from his students, so they can concentrate on the content of the lesson.
- Record your lessons. This gives kids who were late, absent, or just need to review the material a little more the chance to catch up. It also means no excuses! Explain Everything makes it super easy to upload your recordings to YouTube, so students can watch or rewatch your lessons whenever they need.
- Use the infinite canvas to answer your students’ questions on the fly. So you solved an equation to find out how much Cherie will have to pay for her taxi, and now your students want to know how much that taxi would cost if the rate per mile was 2, 3, or 10 times higher (surge pricing, anyone?). No problem! Monitoring the chat means you can answer any questions that come up immediately. Adding follow-up equations is easy with the infinite amount of space available on the canvas.
- Mute the kids who are being disruptive. Every teacher has had that one kid in their class who just would not stop acting out for attention – which, in turn, distracts everyone else and deducts precious minutes from a lesson. Not to mention how frustrating all this is to the teacher! Explain Everything Whiteboard allows you, as the owner of a project, to grant or deny permissions to any member. This means the student can’t disturb anyone else anymore, while still being able to hear and see everything that’s going on in the lesson.
- Be patient! Last but not least, don’t worry if you aren’t able to master the art of conducting engaging remote lessons in one go. Give yourself some time to get to know the app and all it can do for you as a teacher – learn to mix and match all sorts of content and presentation formats to grab the kids’ attention and keep it. Regardless of their learning style, there is something for everyone in a digital whiteboard lesson.
Does all this sound good to you? Be sure to check out Ronnie’s YouTube channel to see lessons he’s created using Explain Everything and get inspired!
