For thousands of children, physically attending school in person is the only notable way they can connect with others. It may be because they’re living in very rural areas without guaranteed Internet access or they may struggle with economic limits that prevent them from paying for an Internet plan but these newly illuminated inequities in remote learning aren’t really new.
We’ve talked an awful lot about SEL in remote learning, focusing mostly on checking in on our students and teachers. One other important component to social-emotional learning, however, now involves creating the right kinds of environments for children to reconnect with some of the things that have been missing for them all throughout the pandemic.
You really do not realize just how small classrooms actually are until you try to successfully place 25 students within them and keep every single one of them six feet from each other. This has even led some teachers to suggest limiting class sizes, which might sound promising in theory since there are definitely some children who have opted to stay home.
Under ordinary conditions, 3D printing is among the most popular avenues for technology teachers to take advantage of all of the advances in STEAM instructional tools. By combining both physical and digital construction, 3D printing helps students think like an engineer, solve pressing problems in a very unique way, collaborate with classmates, and a lot more.
At first, we were very hesitant to continue with promoting classroom packs since they contain a lot of moving parts and promote learning that involves children all touching those same components. Over time, however, various manufacturers have actually created home learning versions and that idea of classroom packs in remote or hybrid learning is no longer as daunting.
This week, we thought it would be fun to highlight five more of our favorite tech tools for helping to bring STEM learning experiences to students who are taking part in full remote or hybrid learning to start out the school year. And, with that being said, we’d like to reiterate one more time that remote learning does not mean STEM has to be forgotten.
What about those students who will still be doing remote learning at the start of the school year? They’ll have social-emotional needs, too. Establishing connections between these students and their new teachers is going to be important for ensuring success throughout the school year, but it’s probably going to be tougher as well.
With help from our vendor partners, we’ve been working hard to make sure educators know how to adapt the tech tools they consistently rely on in the classroom into a home learning solution. Each one is different, but the opportunities to include STEM experiences, like coding, engineering, and design, in distance learning are there.
We’re starting to learn more about the plans in the country’s largest school districts, which include remote learning, hybrid reopenings, and an attempt at full in-person education. But, there are still those educators who feel like it remains too unsafe to fully return to normal and probably plenty of others who aren’t completely comfortable with going back part-time either.
Reopening our school buildings will likely involve one of three action plans: in-person learning, hybrid learning, and remote learning. Once schools first physically closed doors in March, we did not think that things would still be in such a state of uncertainty come August, but the reality is that almost all school leaders are preparing for a back-to-school season unlike any other.
