The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has upended routines in almost every industry, not least of which is K-12 education. This year’s back-to-school season may look and feel differently, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be just as fun. Find out how to use Kiddom to build authentic connections with students online. You can view more webinars in this series here.
The beginning of a new school year has always been a colorful time of year. Students get reacclimated to class schedules and workloads, and warm up their seat in a new classroom. Well, for many schools across the nation, this school year is bound to look and feel a little differently. But that doesn’t mean the warm and giddy traditions of a back to school season have to disappear.
The question at the forefront of nearly every educator’s mind right now is how to engage students without the power of a live classroom connection, five days a week. Earlier this week, Kiddom Customer Success Manager Eric Gutierrez hosted a webinar that poses an answer. Keep reading to discover how to use Kiddom technology to create classroom culture at a distance, and build authentic, inviting connections with students. For more ways to maintain the routines of the classroom virtually, check out our previous webinars below.
- How to Assemble Your Distance Learning Toolkit (Webinar Recap)
- How Can Educators Deliver Equity in a Digital Environment? (Webinar Recap)
- How Kiddom Schools & Districts are Preparing for the Fall (Webinar Recap)
Using Kiddom Announcements to Build Classroom Culture
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Without the right tools, connecting with students at a distance can be challenging. It was bad enough when teachers had to juggle multiple tools in order to maintain instruction; now, with distance learning, students have had to do the same.
Kiddom was designed to close the gap between disparate tools and create a seamless thread between curriculum, instruction, assessment — and now, communication. In our classroom culture webinar, Eric demonstrated three ways to connect with students in Kiddom, using the same tools that lend themselves to instruction and learning management. Check out the first method, the Classroom Announcements feature, below:
The Announcements feature can facilitate great discussions that encourage students to connect with their teachers. Need a hand getting started? Try one of these student discussion prompts each week to get the conversation going.
Building Classroom Culture with Engaging Curriculum
The second way to engage students at the start of the school year is through personalized, fun curricula. In Kiddom, educators have the flexibility to adapt an existing curriculum to fit the needs of their classrooms, or create their own to suit the current moment. Eric debuted 3 creative examples of curricula that engage students on a personal level: journal topics, book club activities, and virtual tours of cities around the world.
Which one of these curricula would you like to try in your classroom? Let us know in the comments!
Giving Dynamic Student Feedback in Kiddom
Using Kiddom to assign journal prompts and ‘About You’ questions is all well and good—but pretty soon it’ll be time to assign work with higher stakes. Why should the culture building stop there?
In Kiddom, it’s easy to provide rich feedback to students using our commenting tool that’s attached to every assignment. Teachers can record videos, audio, images, or text to give students a full picture of their performance and where they can improve. See it in action in this clip from the webinar:
Let’s Review: The Student View
At Kiddom, one of the most frequent questions we get is how do things look for students? You might be pleasantly surprised, or simply pleased to know that the teacher and student views are as similar as they can be — without running the risk of plagiarism! Before opening up for questions, Eric walked us through the student view of everything he just showed us: announcements, assignments, assessments, and feedback.
And there you have it! In Kiddom, building classroom culture at a distance is more than possible: it’s engaging, creative, and fun for both teachers and students. Join us next week for our webinar on Change Management for Implementation and Troubleshooting. In today’s climate of constant change for K-12 education, next week’s conversation is bound to be relevant to your school or district’s situation, whatever it may be.
Kiddom seamlessly connects the most critical aspects of teaching and learning on one platform.
For the first time, educators can share and manage digital curriculum, differentiate instruction, and assess student work in a centralized hub. Learners can take assessments online, see student performance data with the click of a button, and teachers have the insight and tools they need to create individual learning paths.
Are you thinking about bringing digital curriculum to your school or district?
Connect with us in a 15-minute meeting to learn more about available pre-packaged curriculum by Open Up Resources, and how the Kiddom education platform can support your learning community.
