My dear friend and colleague shared her virtual classroom with me, and I am hooked.
A virtual classroom is not a website, podcast, blog, Flipgrid, Google Classroom, YouTube Channel or any of that. Don’t let that stop you from including them in your Virtual Classroom!
A virtual classroom is a digital representation of your classroom. It looks similar to your teaching and learning space; with many of the familiar items that you have in your physical classroom. A Virtual Classroom builds in the interactive features of your physical classroom; just in a different way.
You may have seen the Bitmoji Classrooms swirling around social media. They are cute for sure. They add a bit of fun and flair to a digital environment; bringing a piece of school to students. Teachers are uploading them as their Google Classroom headers as a way to personalize the digital environment.
In the end, I decided not to create one. I knew that it was a rabbit hole that I would get lost in. Everything else would be forgotten and I would spend hours (HOURS) perfecting a cartoon version of my space.
After seeing my friend’s Virtual Classroom I was convinced. She shared with me what she had created using an image of her Library Media Center and live links. I loved it. Within twenty minutes I had one created.
I think the most time I spent was choosing which image of my space to use as the background. I had even contemplated if it would be possible to have both floors represented. Choosing a photo of the first floor was a deliberate decision; a tribute to my students’ hard work when they redesigned the lower level of the library.
Some teachers have been creating Bitmoji Classrooms to personalize their Google Classrooms and other Learning Management Systems. Some of them are doing it to be creative. Others, like my friend and I are using them to engage students.
Virtual Classrooms, like the one above, can be used to provide students with choice. I like to think of it like they are virtually engaging in our space and enjoying virtual stations or virtual enrichment opportunities.
My essentialists team and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about how we all have these great enrichment resources that many of our students would love. The PE teacher has great yoga channels, the art teacher has some great makerspace art opportunities, the music teacher has some music games, and I have all kinds of cool stuff that I have been collecting; I mean curating.
As essentialists, we are acutely aware that our activities can easily get lost in their Seesaw journal, feel overwhelming if optional enrichment activities popped up in their activity feed, or parents would be bombarded with notification from their announcement center.
As we are not the bulk of the instruction, we did not want to add an additional burden to families. Some of our students and families would love enrichment opportunities, and we definitely have the resources. My principal suggested that we us the library website IMS4Kids to house those additional resources and opportunities.
I knew that I wanted this page to stand out from the other pages on the website. This virtual classroom was a great opportunity to make it stand out.
Virtual Classrooms create endless possibilities. You can include links, videos, short animations, and audio.
I tried to create my virtual classroom to be similar in spirit. In a station format with about 5 – 7 stations spread out around the room for students to choose from.
Even though I am not sure yet what I will teach PreK-2 next week, I already had the lesson for grades 3 – 5 in the queue.
Students in grades 3-5 will use what they learned about Digital Etiquette to write Kudos to others in Classcraft.
This is the seventh post in a series about Emergency Remote Learning.
Next week, I am contemplating moving towards some makerspace opportunities for my older students. Stay tuned.
