Zoom, Lava, Philosophers, and x’s

I attended a professional development session run by Doug Shaw, Ph. D. on January 14. The session was titled OK, Zoomer. The session consists of several ways you can use and stretch the use of Zoom features to make classes more interesting and interactive.

Each technique in itself is not surprising, but there is probably a few ideas that would be new to anyone. To give you the flavor without giving away the whole session, here are two that tie together that I am using. “The enter key is lava” can be used to have students type a response but not feel they are in a race with other students. Students may not press enter until the teacher says to press enter.

Another technique is to have a few backgrounds ready to key certain activities. I use the green and red check background to let students know they are voting, the Socrates background to let them know we are using Socrative and the lava background for… well you know.

It was 90 minutes well spent. Shaw asks for a donation for attending and recommends $10 to $30 depending on your ability to pay. As of this morning nothing new is scheduled but there is a link where you can be alerted to new sessions.